Offensive Cartoon

The channel - Khanfar added, is probably the only media in Fallujah, where its correspondent seized hours of the channel�s air time to convey the deteriorating situation over the past few days.

The correspondent in Fallujah said that even besieged local inhabitants of the town follow the latest developments in their bastion of resistance through al-Jazeera.

Corpses are littered in the streets as U.S. warplanes hit the only hospital and other makeshift medical centers, he added.

As Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt, the deputy director of U.S. military operations in Iraq, was speaking by phone on al-Jazeera and insisting that American forces declared a unilateral ceasefire in Fallujah, the channel was airing live images of continued air raids by F16 fighter jets on residential neighborhoods of the town.

Kimmitt later dismissed the coverage of the channel for the crisis as a "series of lies". However, asked by al-Jazeera anchor about the live images, the U.S. commander said he was not accusing al-Jazeera of faking the images, but rather �looked at things differently�.

He said the attacks by F16 fighter jets and helicopters were meant to take out �armed insurgents firing at our troops�. The anchor reminded Kimmitt, however, that �live coverage showed children and women killed by the missiles, not armed insurgents�.

Observers see the U.S. highly unusual demand for al-Jazeera to leave Fallujah as a sign of crisis of credibility the U.S. forces face in the eyes of the Iraqis as well as people all over the Arab and Islamic world.

Known for its quality programs, professionalism and independence, "the CNN of the Arab world" is the most-watched channel in this part of the world.

Khanfar expressed hopes - brimming with fears - that the three correspondents now in Fallujah "would not meet the same fate of Tarik Ayyuob".

The channel officials charged the missile attack was a "deliberate" strike, recalling that the office of the station had been hit in November 2001 during the U.S.-led assault on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Khanfar, however, put up a defiant tone, saying the station�s team - also including a number of engineers and photographers - would not get out of the town "voluntarily".

"We are not a political party in the crisis. We are just media guys," Khanfar said.

Having the station�s headquarters, Qatar also plays host to the U.S Central Command, which directs the military invasion of Iraq as of March 20. It has one of the largest U.S. military bases in the Arab Gulf.

U.S. Marines fire mortar shells in the outskirts of Fallujah

Al-Jazeera website was downed by hackers since Tuesday, March 25, a few days after Washington and London blasted the station for its footages  of dead U.S. and British soldiers and captured PoWs.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed on November 25 he has seen reports suggesting al-Jazeera have cooperated  with Iraqi resistance fighters attacking U.S. troops.

Sixty-four journalists were killed across the world in 2003, 19 of them in Iraq, according to a report  published by the International Press Institute (IPI) in March 10.

On August 18, in yet another crime against journalists in occupied Iraq, U.S. troops shot dead  an award-winning Reuters cameraman while he was filming on Sunday, August 17, near a U.S.-run detention camp in Baghdad.