14 Marines Die in Huge Explosion in Western Iraq

"Let me ask you, is the 3rd Battalion of the 25th Marines fighting the entire war?" demanded Ken Hiltz, a police officer in Ohio and former Marine who has friends in Lima Company. "This battalion is decimated. I'm just losing count."

President Bush, speaking to lawmakers, business leaders and others during his vacation in Texas, called news of the deaths Wednesday a "grim reminder" that the United States is still at war.

"These terrorists and insurgents will use brutal tactics because they're trying to shake the will of the United States of America," Bush said. "They want us to retreat."

Haditha has been the scene of repeated attacks on the 3/25. Four Marines were killed in a firefight this spring at the town's hospital, where insurgents fired from behind patients, Marines said.

Hit, Haditha and a string of other towns along the Euphrates are populated almost entirely by farmers and merchants of Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority. The vast majority of Iraqi insurgents are Sunnis, and they have been joined by radical Sunnis from other countries who enter Iraq from Syria to attack U.S. and Iraqi security forces and members of Iraq's newly dominant Shiite majority.

Their tactics include suicide attacks, which military spokesmen say are mostly carried out by foreign extremists, and roadside bombings conducted by well-trained cells of insurgents who make and plant the devices. By far the most prevalent and lethal tool of the insurgents, roadside bombs almost always employ artillery or mortar shells rigged with fuses and detonators.

With experience, insurgents have figured out increasingly lethal ways to rig bombs, U.S. military officials say. Frequent patrols -- which reduce the time insurgents have to plant bombs -- have been one of the Marines' main methods for keeping bombers from making entire regions impassable, but also put Marines at risk of hitting bombs themselves.

Residents of the towns along the Euphrates typically tell Marines that the only insurgents in their area are foreign fighters. Contacted by telephone in Haditha on Wednesday, however, some residents celebrated the bombing -- which apparently inflicted no civilian casualties -- even as they braced for retaliation.

"Me, I'm very happy with this operation, and it's the same for the people here," said Nour Ahmed, 35, an employee of a government-run industry. "But at the same time, we're afraid of the Marine reaction in the coming hours."

"We've never had such a resistance operation outside town that cost the Americans a lot without hurting many civilians," said Mohammed Hamed Hadeethi, a professor at the region's Anbar University. "That's what gives this operation a whole different color than other operations. We call it the white operation."

Mijbil, the motorist who spoke by cell phone from his hospital bed, said he was injured when survivors in the U.S. convoy searched the neighborhood. Mijbil said he ducked under the steering wheel of his pickup, fearing that the Americans would mistake him for a bomber. A Marine sprinting past his truck apparently did just that, Mijbil said, and shot him six times through the door.

It was impossible to independently confirm his account Wednesday.

Staff writer Peter Slevin in Chicago contributed to this report.