IRAQ: US forces have found nearly 20 houses in the Iraqi city of Falluja where they believe people were tortured and where foreign hostages may have been held and killed, officers have said.
"It looks like we found a number of houses," where torture took place, Maj Jim West, an intelligence officer, said. US officers put the number of torture sites at "close to 20".
Among them may have been houses where American contractors Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong and their British colleague, Kenneth Bigley, were beheaded after being kidnapped in Baghdad in mid-September, officers said. The Jordanian al-Qaeda ally, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for their killings.
"Murder and torture" took place at the "atrocity sites", Maj West said, showing images of bloodstained walls and floors: "These thugs depended on fear and intimidation. Hostages have been found chained to walls."
"They had a sick, depraved culture of violence in that city," said Lieut Col Daniel Wilson of the Marines, who stormed the city on November 8th to wrest it from Sunni Muslim rebels.
Maj West said Marines had also found a house thought to belong to associates of Zarqawi. However, US intelligence indicates that Zarqawi did not live there but visited on occasion.
A reporter from the New York Times described visiting a house on Sunday where a banner hung on the wall referred to Zarqawi's group and resembled flags seen in videos of hostages distributed by militants.
In another, he saw a wire cage similar to that seen in a video of Bigley pleading for his life - although the newspaper said US troops thought it differed from the one on film. A CNN reporter quoted other soldiers saying it might be the same cage. The New York Times correspondent said he saw what looked like a fingerprint in dried blood on a wall and photographs taken by troops of items found in the house - handcuffs, shackles and blood-encrusted knives like those seen in beheading videos.
The newspaper cautioned, however, that investigations were continuing and it was not clear who if anyone was held captive or killed there.