Marines Warn of Battle in Fallouja

U.S. Marines encircling this volatile city west of Baghdad plan to storm into town within days if insurgents do not comply with a cease-fire agreement and relinquish their heavy arms, the top Marine general in Iraq warned Thursday.

Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said that only a paltry amount of outdated, mostly useless weaponry had been turned in since the accord was reached Monday between U.S. officials and a group of Iraqi intermediaries.

It was junk,” Conway said of the pile of mostly inoperative weapons turned over to Marines at two checkpoints. “Things I wouldn’t ask my Marines to begin to fire.”

Military officials now question whether the Iraqi negotiators hold sufficient clout with the insurgents. Meanwhile, the Marines are growing impatient as the fighters continue to engage them in skirmishes at the edge of the city.

U.S. officials in Baghdad stressed that further delays could result in a new battle, likely to cost the lives of many insurgents, Marines and civilians. At a news briefing, authorities showed photographs of the rusted and broken grenades, dud rockets, useless guns and other weapons that had been turned in.

“We are in a mode now of days, not weeks,” cautioned Dan Senor, chief spokesman for L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq.

Fallouja has taken on symbolic importance here, a fact that has contributed to the lack of an easy solution. From the U.S. perspective, cracking down on insurgents and gaining control of the city is a key step toward pacifying the mostly Sunni Muslim region of central and western Iraq -- the so-called Sunni Triangle, where resistance to U.S. occupation has been the fiercest.

After a bloody month during which casualties in Iraq soared -- about 100 U.S. troops have died since March 31 -- the Bush administration is eager for a victory in Fallouja, and to ease fears about the impending hand-over of power to an interim Iraqi government.

“If Fallouja can become safe, all of Iraq can become safe,” said Sheik Takee Khayre Alrane, a member of the U.S.-backed Fallouja Town Council. “If not, people will say we surrendered Fallouja to the terrorists.”

For the insurgents who want to drive the U.S. out of Iraq, Fallouja has become the embodiment of their fight, a rallying cry that has drawn unknown numbers of new recruits into the guerrilla war against the U.S.-led occupation and Washington’s blueprint for a Western-style democratic government in the country.

Between 1,000 and 2,000 Iraqi and foreign fighters are believed to be gathered in the city, though officials stress that the numbers are rough estimates.

As for the Iraqi public, the level of civilian casualties in the last three weeks -- and the prospect of more deaths -- has eroded support, even among moderates, for the U.S.-led effort.

The Marine offensive in Fallouja began April 5 after four U.S. civilian security contractors were slain there in March and their bodies mutilated -- an act that U.S. officials believed called for a swift and decisive response.

The negotiations aimed at breaking the deadlock do not involve the insurgents directly. U.S. authorities are talking with a group of national officials from Baghdad, Fallouja town leaders and Sunni Muslim clerics who are thought to have influence with the fighters -- an assumption questioned Thursday by Conway.

“When we entered negotiations with prominent people around the city, we had every hope that they could argue reasonably for a peaceful solution,” the general told reporters. “That said, we are somewhat questioning if they represent the people of Fallouja, because it is our estimate that the people of Fallouja have not responded well to the agreement.”

Iraqis on the negotiating team have countered that proof of their influence is the fact that attacks on U.S. forces fell after Sunni clerics and others became involved in the discussions.

But the cease-fire has been tenuous from the start. Much of the Marines’ impatience stems from the fact that the fighters have mounted numerous rocket and mortar attacks on U.S. encampments in recent days.

On Wednesday, Marines fought a five-hour battle in the northwestern part of the city after a patrol was attacked. Three troops were wounded in the fight; at least 36 insurgents were killed and dozens more are thought to have been wounded, Marine officials said.

After encircling the city nearly three weeks ago, Marines engaged in heavy fighting with the insurgents. The U.S. established footholds in four sections of the city, but insurgents still hold sway in much of its core, a densely populated warren of streets and alleys where house-to-house fighting would be likely during a renewed battle.

Many Iraqis, including moderates, have expressed outrage at what they call the excessive number of civilian casualties in Fallouja. During the early battles, Arab-language television showed graphic images of the casualties. U.S. officials say an estimate of 600 civilian deaths is highly exaggerated.

Many Falloujans blame the Marines, not the insurgents, for the deaths of civilians, said Saadalah Mahdi, president of the Fallouja Town Council.

“The outsiders [insurgents] are a small group, but when the coalition forces fight them, innocent people -- women, children, the elderly -- are dying,” said Mahdi, a lawyer and head of a human rights organization. “When families see members die, that turns them to help the terrorists.”

On Thursday, the Iraqi Health Ministry said at least 219 Iraqis had died in fighting in the area of Fallouja and nearby Ramadi between April 5 and April 22. The dead included 24 women and 28 children, it said. Nearly 700 people were injured, it said.

Throughout the battle zones of western, central and south-central Iraq, the ministry said, at least 502 Iraqis died in fighting during that period, including 179 in Baghdad. Almost 2,000 were injured. The ministry figures do not differentiate between insurgents and civilians.

U.S. officials said they were unfamiliar with the methodology of the report and declined to comment further.

The Marines acknowledge that they face an uphill battle in winning over the residents of Fallouja.

“We lose the IO [information operations] battle in this city,” said Col. John Toolan, commander of the 1st Marine Regiment. “We can’t get our word out. They don’t believe what we say.”

Marine brass wanted a solution that included insurgents voluntarily relinquishing their weapons and Iraqi police and the Civil Defense Corps returning to provide security. Many of those security officers fled the city when the fighting began, and the defection was a major disappointment to U.S. officials, who see police, Defense Corps members and the new Iraqi army as the successors to U.S. troops.

“We know that the sooner we can put an Iraqi face on security, the sooner people [will] gain self-respect and put their own situation back to normal [and] the sooner we can recede off the horizon,” Conway said.

In recent days, Marines have been scrambling to reassemble the police force and Civil Defense Corps in Fallouja.

About 350 officers and corps members returned to duty Tuesday and Wednesday, and several hundred waited in a lengthy line Thursday to re-register for duty and thus be restored to the payroll.

Each man was asked whether he would be willing to patrol alongside U.S. troops -- a key goal of the Marines in a city where security forces have for months resisted working in proximity to Americans, fearing retribution from opponents of the occupation. Police and corps members who said they were unwilling to work with U.S. troops were not taken back.

“That’s critically important because it’s going to require a level of presence of U.S. forces that they’re not familiar with,” Toolan said. “It’s not going to be a return to the status quo.”

Law enforcement authorities waiting to be interviewed by the Marines said they were eager to get back to work and arrest the thieves who were stealing from homes and businesses.

But when asked to place the blame for the fighting, they were equivocal.

“The Americans came and the planes killed people,” said Nori Hamad, an Iraqi police officer in Fallouja. “We want to protect our town, but too many people are dying.”

Added another police officer, Ayad Naji: “Since the Americans came, there is no water, nothing to eat, no electricity. Many children have died because of the airplanes.”

Civil corpsman Adil Firah said the Marines were keeping people from fulfilling their religious obligations.

“The Americans shoot at people and we cannot attend mosque,” he said. “The thieves come from outside of Fallouja. We can take care of them, without the Americans.”

As part of the deal reached Monday, up to 50 families a day were to be allowed to return to the city. More than 60,000 people are believed to have fled during the initial fighting.

After the battle Wednesday, Marines suspended the returns. However, the influx is expected to resume, even though the military is concerned that fighters could sneak into the city posing as relatives of townspeople.

Perry reported from Fallouja and McDonnell from Baghdad.