SAMARRA, Iraq - A man describing himself as a resistance spokesman Tuesday rejected US reports of 54 insurgents killed in intense exchanges with US troops here, saying just two militants had died, both of whom were among eight civilians reported killed.
"We had two killed in the attack," the man told French journalist Pierre Barbancey, correspondent for the French communist party daily L'Humanite.
"Both their bodies were among the eight at the hospital," said the man, saying he was spokesman for the two-month-old National Resistance Front for the Liberation of Iraq.
In the face of insistent questions about the fate of the bodies of the 54 insurgents battlefield reports claimed had been killed, US commanders had insisted the militants must have taken them away.
US commanders also insisted that they had yet to receive the police and hospital reports of eight civilian dead.
In all just 12 people took part in Sunday's ambush in Samarra, not the 64 or more spoken of by the Americans, said the spokesman, who talked to the journalist unarmed in a private home in the city.
"When the convoy entered the town, four groups of three people each took up position to attack it," he said.
The coalition's deputy director of operations, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, told a Baghdad briefing Monday two groups of 30 insurgents each had ambushed two armoured columns escorting a large delivery of Iraqi cash into Samarra. He said A third group of four men in a black BMW attacked a separate engineering detachment as it passed through the town.
Asked why US commanders had spoken of so many more assailants, the resistance spokesman said: "They wanted to portray us as common criminals seeking to commit a hold-up. We only wanted to attack the US convoy.
"If we'd wanted to take the money, we could have attacked the bank whenever we wanted to, without the need to take on the Americans."
The spokesman said his local resistance group had been formed in Samarra in June, although the national umbrella grouping had not been founded until September 26, initially under a slightly different name.
He stressed that he himself had left Saddam Hussein's former ruling Baath party as long ago as 1984.
"Right from the start we excluded from our organization members of the Baath party and soldiers of the army and Republican Guard who surrendered Baghdad to the Americans without a fight," he said.
"We're a nationalist movement. Of course we have an Islamic orientation because most Iraqis are Muslims but we have Shiites, Sunnis, Christians and Kurds among our members.
"Our resistance is like that led by (General Charles) de Gaulle in France against the Germans during the war (World War II)."
The spokesman said his group had lost a total of 17 fighters since its formation, including some who had been killed while handling explosives in the preparation of makeshift bombs.
He said his men had hit a US Apache helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade during an attack on the Central Intelligence Agency's base in Samarra on November 20.
"The tail of the chopper was hit and it was forced to make a hard landing."
He said the wider grouping to which his outfit belonged had also been responsible for a deadly ambush against seven Spanish intelligence agents south of Baghdad on Saturday.
"The group saw the two cars pass by once and thought they were CIA agents, as the Americans use the same kind of vehicle. They took up position and awaited their return, then attacked.
"It was only afterwards that the group realised that the victims were Spaniards. But it doesn't matter, as we have decided to attack all the foreign forces collaborating with the Americans."
The seven agents were given a state funeral in Madrid Tuesday attended by King Juan Carlos.
In a pamphlet handed to the journalist, the NRFLI said it was an umbrella for separate resistance groups operating in Baghdad, in the troubled Fallujah area west of the capital, around the main northern city of Mosul and in three districts of north-central Iraq - around Samarra, Tikrit and Baiji; around Duluiyah, Yasreb and Iskhaki; and around Hawijah, Riyad and Kirkuk.
The front said it also had groups operating in the relatively calm regions of Hilla in south-central Iraq, and Basra and Amara in the far south, as well as other towns.
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