A NEW STRATEGY

And given the outcome, one they will abandon with all due haste.

American military officials said today that guerrillas in Iraq appear to have adopted a new tactic of highly coordinated ambushes, judging from an attack on Sunday in which soldiers delivering Iraqi currency to two banks were bombarded with small arms and grenade fire.

American soldiers killed 54 people in the intense firefight that ensued in the town of Samarra in central Iraq, the military said today, updating the death toll from the 46 that was reported on Sunday.

Military officials said that the body count could be unclear because the guerrillas were not likely to bring their dead or wounded in to local hospitals.

``Many of the dead attackers were found wearing Fedayeen uniforms,'' the military statement on Sunday said.

And this story talks about the battle from the eyes of an NCO involved.

As soon as we got to that location, we started receiving direct fire via small arms, AK-47s. My guys from both the east and the west bank started returning fire back to the point of origin and neutralizing any targets they'd actually seen.

During the course of the firefight, we started receiving not only small-arms [fire]. We had incoming and direct fire from mortars. We also had RPGs coming through here just hitting us all around.

As far as my thoughts during that, it was -- it was an extremely scary time. I remember I talked to my wife yesterday morning. I've got a 10-month-old son. He'll be 10 months old on the fourth of February, the fourth of December, excuse me. And she told me, she said, 'Don't do anything stupid. Don't put yourself in any harm's way or anything like that. Just be extremely careful.'

And I reckoned during the course of that fight, we were -- I kept thinking about my wife and my son. And I kept communicating with my team that I had with me and I was looking at the rest of the squad that was there and making sure they were doing their job. They were all well. They were doing an excellent job as far as returning fire and everything.