KHALDIYA: The bomb went off just outside the school as the IPS correspondent stood speaking to children and teachers within.

The headmaster smiled. "You will hear many of these every day if you stay here another day or two," he said. "The resistance will not stop until the last American leaves."

The children too took no notice of the blast, which shook the doors and windows of the half-destroyed school in this town near Fallujah, 70km west of Baghdad. The children are growing up in occupied Iraq-- and they are resisting it.

"Americans are bad," said 11-year-old Mustafa. "They killed my family." The family were killed in Operation Phantom Fury of November 2004 as they tried to flee the city, teachers said. That operation killed thousands and destroyed much of Fallujah and towns around it.

"God will send all Americans to hellfire," cried another child in the classroom. Attempts to suggest that not everyone they thought American was bad proved fruitless.

"How can we teach them forgiveness when they see Americans killing their family members every day," the teacher in the classroom who gave her name as Shyamaa told IPS. "Words cannot cover the stream of blood and these signs of destruction, and words cannot hide the daily raids they see."

For the headmaster, the idea of a clash of civilisations is not just an idea.

"The gap between civilisations is widening thanks to the US administration's crimes against humanity all over the world," he said. "They seem determined to tear the world apart, and their footprints cannot be removed for the coming generations."

Outside the school a group of women and some elderly men approached the IPS correspondent. One of the men boasted that his son was a resistance fighter. "I am proud that he is a hero fighting these Americans. And they used to talk to us about our human rights."

Down the street everyone is jumpy. People seemed to be watching out for unusual signs. A driver told IPS that resistance fighters usually give residents some sort of coded warning before they let off a bomb."

As the correspondent stood taking notes on a roadside before leaving Khaldiya, a young man on a bicycle shouted as he passed by: "The one and only solution for the Americans is to leave this province or face death."

The US forces are now leaving some towns. Cities like Dhuluiya, Talafar and Fallujah west of Baghdad have become virtually no-go areas for US forces. Attacks against the US-led Multi-National Forces (MNF) continue to increase.

"They keep asking us to hand over resistance fighters to them," a farmer at a village in the area told IPS. "So that they can torture them in Abu Ghraib, Falcon base, Baghdad airport and other detention centres." But resistance fighters are gaining support, far from being handed over.

Resistance attacks often take the shape of a small car that appears from nowhere. The men inside attack US tanks or trucks carrying soldiers, and disappear fast. Local people never provide US forces with information where the men came from or where they went.—Dawn/The IPS News Service