Armor-mounted occupation troops swept through towns and villages west of Baghdad after dawn Monday, arresting suspected resistance fighters and searching for outlawed weapons. It was the second day of a forceful new operation called Desert Scorpion based on intelligence pinpointing opponents of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. It followed the expiration on Sunday of an amnesty program for people turning in heavy weapons. Families of those arrested warned resistance would only increase. They targeted six homes and took away nine men, acting on information about where suspected anti-American insurgents were hiding and illegal weapons stockpiled. On the outskirts of Ramadi, about 18 miles farther west, troops seized four brothers from one home and two brothers from a neighboring family. In the Ramadi area, the families were still asleep when the armored column rumbled into their village at 5:15 a.m. Occupation troops terrorizing bound men and women in the two houses with plastic handcuffs and moved them into a nearby field while they searched the homes, residents said. They found **ONE*** rifle. Omar Mishrif Saleh, an older brother of the detainees, said the soldiers knew what they were looking for and sought out the house of his brother who had served in Saddam Hussein's army. "Someone must have informed on us," he said, although he denied that his arrested brothers, aged 20 to 30, were engaged in anti-American activities. Minutes after the soldiers left, the Saleh house was crowded with sympathizing neighbors who tried to comfort the weeping mother. "The resistance is going to increase," said Abdul Qader Fahd, 30, a teacher. "Dealing with civilians like this is terrorism." In Khaldiyah, U.S. commanders said they were acting on a tip from an Iraqi man captured after he and two other men fired rocket-propelled grenades Saturday night at a routine U.S. patrol near an abandoned Iraqi ammunition dump. The other two men escaped and the prisoner pointed to two homes he said the insurgents had been using as a hideout. When military police entered the homes, they found only families and a few hundred rounds of pistol and assault rifle ammunition buried in the backyard of one of them. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Occupation troops raid a house at Khaldiyah, 70 kms west of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday June 16, 2003. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das)