Thousands in Fallouja Flee; Council Totters

A cease-fire between U.S. Marines and insurgents collapsed less than two hours after it took effect Friday as tens of thousands of women and children fled this besieged city and occupation officials scrambled to stave off a revolt from their handpicked Governing Council.

On the anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, authorities reported that five more U.S. troops had been killed in the last two days, bringing to 49 the number of American deaths since Sunday.

As the deadliest week for U.S. troops since Hussein’s ouster neared its end, Marines launched a major ground offensive this morning in Fallouja, bolstered by a third battalion that boosted troop strength from 2,500 to 3,750.

Iraqi insurgents said they had taken six more hostages -- two Americans and four Italians -- a day after militants showed footage of three Japanese captives whom they threatened to burn unless Tokyo withdrew its troops, which are noncombat.

By most accounts, the Iraqi dead numbered in the hundreds. In Fallouja, residents took advantage of a lull in the fighting to bury dozens of their dead in makeshift graves in the city’s soccer stadium. As today’s offensive began, at least 18 more were killed.

A week of intense clashes between coalition troops and a variety of Sunni and Shiite Muslim fighters triggered concern that the coalition had lost control of the country.

“The lid of the pressure cooker has come off,” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told BBC Radio. “There is no doubt that the current situation is very serious and it is the most serious that we have faced.

“It is plainly the fact today that there are larger numbers of people, and they are people on the ground, Iraqis, not foreign fighters, who are engaged in this insurgency,” Straw said.

U.S. authorities here sought to cast the widespread unrest in the best light.

“It’s a gross mischaracterization to say the entire country is at war,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters.

And Secretary of State Colin L. Powell took to the airwaves Friday afternoon, conducting a series of interviews in an effort to assure Americans that the recent developments did not signal a loss of control over Iraq.

Powell reiterated Bush administration statements that the burst of violence was caused by “remnants of the old regime” and the militia of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr “that doesn’t represent all of the Shiite people.”

“And those elements haven’t been fully dealt with yet,” he said. “But they will be dealt with.”

As the U.S. sought to stamp out uprisings across central and southern Iraq, its civilian administrators faced a different kind of turmoil in Baghdad.

A Shiite member of the Iraqi Governing Council, Abdul Karim Mohammedawi, suspended his membership in the 25-member body and four others threatened to follow suit to protest what they described as collective punishment of Fallouja residents by Marines.

“We condemned U.S. military operations in Fallouja which [were] a form of mass punishment in response” to last week’s killing and mutilation of four U.S. security contractors, Adnan Pachachi, a senior council member, told Al Arabiya television. Pachachi has been one of the occupation’s most vocal supporters.

Much of Friday’s hostilities occurred in Fallouja, where a noon cease-fire offered some hope that residents of the Sunni Triangle city would get a reprieve from five days of heavy combat. Hospital officials said about 450 residents had been killed and more than 1,000 injured, although there was no way to verify those numbers.

U.S. authorities said most of the casualties were insurgents. Residents said the dead included many civilians.

U.S. civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer III announced the cease-fire to allow residents to retrieve their dead and collect food and medicine. U.S. commanders also wanted Governing Council members to meet with insurgent leaders.

Even before the cease-fire, thousands of Iraqis made a wild rush out of the city with their belongings loaded in battered cars, buses and trucks. The line of traffic stretched for miles in heat and dust. The exodus was bogged down from the start, and it slowed even more as vehicles stalled and were pushed from the roadway.

One car, an antique Chrysler, sagged under the weight of 25 people who filled its cab, covered its hood and roof and clung to its fenders. Its passengers included a woman nursing an infant. Another car was filled with sheep.

“Going to Baghdad,” said Abdul Mohan as his car pulled away from the last Fallouja checkpoint. “Too much bombing. Too many dead people in the streets.”

Marine Col. John Toolan put the number who left at “easily 60,000,” or about a quarter of the city’s population.

Marines stopped and searched cars. Women and children were allowed to leave. Men of military age were turned back.

But if there was rejoicing over the cease-fire, it was brief. Within 90 minutes, the gun battles resumed.

“It is only 300,000 people living here, a small city, but the way the Americans are fighting it’s as if they are fighting a whole continent,” said resident Saad Farhan. “This is the reconstruction and the freedom Bush is talking about? We prefer Saddam’s repression.”

As night fell, explosions erupted when a U.S. AC-130 gunship began strafing targets. The gunship fired at a cave where insurgents were believed to be hiding after attacking Marines. A 500-pound laser-guided bomb also struck the cave, said 1st Lt. Eric Knapp, a military spokesman.

Earlier Friday, insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at a U.S. fuel convoy just outside Baghdad, killing an American soldier, sending a plume of black smoke over the capital and possibly taking at least one American hostage.

Peter Cave, the foreign editor of the Australian Broadcasting Corp., said he and a crew were on a highway that connects the capital to Fallouja to film the burned-out wreckage of a convoy. He said a car with three masked men pulled up beside his crew and boasted, “We’ve got an American!”

The armed men pulled a black hood off a fourth passenger, and Cave said he saw a blond man with a mustache in civilian clothes who was bleeding from an injury to his arm. Cave said he asked the man what happened.

“Our convoy was attacked,” the man replied in an American accent, Cave said. The man gave his name as Thomas Hamill and the car sped off, Cave said. He and his crew left, alerted the nearest U.S. troops and returned to Baghdad. U.S. tanks later closed the road to all passenger traffic.

A Reuters journalist later reported seeing two Western men taken into a mosque in the town of Abu Ghraib, just west of the American convoy attack. The men shouted, “Italians, Italians!” as they were led inside. The Italian government said in a statement that all its citizens in Iraq had been accounted for.

The taking of hostages emerged as a new and disturbing development in Iraq this week when insurgents abducted five civilians -- three Japanese, one Canadian and one Israeli Arab.

U.S. officials Friday declined to respond to reports that Americans were in the hands of insurgents.

In Baqubah, north of Baghdad, about 200 insurgents gathered in a traffic circle downtown and started firing AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades at coalition vehicles that were driving past, said Army Capt. Issam Bornales. The coalition fired back with artillery to stop the assault. No casualty reports were immediately available.

In southern Iraq, more than 1,000 U.S. troops backed by tanks forced their way into Kut, two days after Ukrainian forces withdrew in the face of clashes with militiamen loyal to Sadr. Troops retook police stations and government buildings occupied by militia members.

“We are fairly comfortable that the town of Al Kut is well on its way to coming back under coalition control,” Kimmitt said.

In neighboring Najaf, Sadr’s supporters continued to control the holy city.

Uprisings in southern Iraq exploded after U.S. authorities last week arrested a top Sadr aide on charges that he plotted to kill a prominent Shiite cleric. U.S. authorities later unsealed a warrant for Sadr in connection with that slaying.

For the last few days, Sadr has been holed up at Najaf’s most prominent shrine, which is guarded by his militiamen.

On Friday, Sadruddin Qubanchi, deputy chairman of the influential Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, issued a sermon that sought to distance the nation’s most revered Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, from Sadr.

“Our agenda is in political participation and political resistance and not armed resistance,” Qubanchi said in his sermon, adding that the statement was backed by Sistani. “This is why we said we are against terrorist activities, and we request the occupation authorities and the [Governing Council] to work together with the Iraqi people on this basis, by allowing them to participate politically.”

In Karbala, authorities were bracing for attacks during the weekend’s Shiite holiday, when more than 1 million pilgrims were expected to flock to the city.

Kimmitt said U.S. troops would stay out of Karbala during the holiday and allow local leaders to maintain security. “We are taking a very passive approach -- that was always the plan,” he said.

Kimmitt downplayed the threat posed by Sadr’s thousands of armed followers and the idea that the group might foreshadow a rebellion by the country’s Shiite majority.

“We have one cleric, to use that term loosely, who is inciting violence,” Kimmitt said, “and to suggest that 10,000 of his followers carrying guns is representative of 15 million Shiites is a mischaracterization.”

Special correspondents Hamid Sulaibi in Fallouja, Saad Fakr Deen in Najaf and Said Rifai in Baghdad and Times staff writers Paul Richter in Washington, Edmund Sanders in Baqubah and Monte Morin in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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Friday’s developments

Fallouja At least 60,000 flee the city.

Kut U.S. units force their way into the city two days after Ukrainian troops fled.

Combat deaths: * 49 U.S. troops killed since Sunday. In Fallouja, hospital officials say about 450 Iraqis have been killed.

Reported kidnappings: * 2 Western men are seen being taken into a mosque in Abu Ghraib.

* An Australian Broadcast Corp. editor reports seeing a man with an American accent held by gunmen west of Baghdad. The hostage gave his name as Thomas Hamill, the editor said.

Sources: www.globalsecurity.org, Associated Press, Reuters, Times reports