Could this be true? Is it just feel good propaganda? Would our media lie to us?

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 27 November 2006

Al-Fallujah.

Iraqi Resistance shoots down US F-16 jet fighter with Strela rockets after it dropped cluster bombs on Resistance positions near al-Fallujah midday Monday.

In a dispatch posted at 4:25pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the US military had admitted that one of its F-16 fighter bombers had gone down near the town of al-Fallujah, about 60km west of Baghdad.

Mafkarat al-Islam reported an Iraqi journalist as telling al-Jazeera satellite TV that according to eyewitnesses the American airplane was flying at low altitude in the area when the Resistance ambushed it from the ground and struck it with a missile, bringing it down immediately. An American statement said that there had been only one pilot aboard the craft. The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent noted that the airplane had been dropping cluster bombs on Resistance fighters in the area just before it was shot down.

The US forces imposed a curfew in the area where the warplane was shot down and swarms of US aircraft could be seen cruising in the skies over the area. Quds Press reported that the plane was attacking Resistance positions in farms near al-Karmah, east of al-Fallujah, dropping cluster bombs on them when the Resistance fired a surfact-to-air Strela missile at the low-flying plane and struck it. Quds Press quoted witnesses as saying that the missile hit the plane which burst into a ball of flame and exploded into pieces in the air. The pieces then fell scattered to earth onto a number of farms not far from where the Strela had been launched.

In a dispatch posted at 5:54pm Makkah time Monday evening, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that eyewitnesses in the al-Haswah area, 30km east of al-Fallujah related details of the downing of the American F-16 warplane at 1:30pm local time Monday. The al-Fallujah correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported the eyewitnesses who spoke with him by telephone as saying that the Resistance fired two Strela surface-to-air rockets at the F-16. One of the rockets scored a direct hit on the airplane, sending it plummeting into date palm groves known locally as the Abu Jahali groves where it crashed into the earth in a massive explosion and fire.

Other witnesses said that the fighter plane had attacked a group of Resistance fighters in a house in the middle of al-Haswah, killing a number of them. That prompted surviving Resistance men to fire rockets at the F-16 while it was flying at low altitude. The witnesses said that the town of al-Haswah, with a population of some 20,000 people was at that moment entirely surrounded by US troops who were carrying out mass arrests of residents.

Quds Press noted that this was the first time that the Americans admitted the loss of an F-16 warplane in Iraq. Independent sources, Quds Press noted however, had reported that the Resistance had shot down an F-16 during the First Battle of al-Fallujah in the spring of 2004. The US government did not admit the loss of that aircraft.