Unknown group claims responsibility for Fallujah killings.

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - A previously unknown group claimed the gruesome killing of four US contractors in Fallujah, western Iraq, in revenge for Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

“This is a gift from the people of Fallujah to the people of Palestine and the family of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin who was assassinated by the criminal Zionists,” said in the statement from the “Brigades of Martyr Ahmed Yassin.”

“We advise the US forces to withdraw from Iraq and we advise the families of the American soldiers and the contractors not to come to Iraq,” said the statement obtained by AFP.

The statement, entitled “Fallujah, the graveyard of the Americans,” claimed the group’s fighters killed “members of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Zionist Mossad,” referring to Israel’s intelligence agency.

It said the “blind violence” of Fallujah residents resulted from an increasing hatred of the Americans and was also in response to the “US aggression, raids on mosques and homes, the arrests, the torture of clerics and the terrorizing of women and children.”