Troops Round Up Corpses, Weapons in Fallouja

The Marines used a grappling hook with a long line to shift the battered body, so they would be protected by distance if the corpse were booby-trapped.

“It’s tough work,” said Pfc. Keel Jesse, wearing surgical gloves and a mask, like the other U.S. troops collecting dead insurgents. “But someone has to do it.”

Down the road, in the city’s gritty, industrial southeast, Army Capt. Douglas Walters was getting ready to blow up a car bomb factory, where an already-rigged Chevrolet Suburban was parked with a current Texas registration sticker in the windshield.

“They had everything they needed here,” Walters said, surveying what might look like an auto body shop but for the boxes of mortar rounds and other explosives.

The battle for this former rebel stronghold has shifted to cleanup and reconstruction, even though pockets of resistance remain. Fighters occasionally emerge from homes or bunkers to fire at U.S.-led forces, but the troops are going house to house to wipe them out.

A trip with Marine officers on Thursday offered a glimpse of what passes for life in this devastated, still largely deserted city, which became a worldwide symbol of resistance to U.S. power last spring. Amid the sporadic fighting, some troops have turned to such tasks as clearing out arms caches and organizing humanitarian aid.

“This is not a linear battle, where one part ends and you move on to the next thing,” said Marine Col. Craig Tucker, who heads one of the two regimental combat teams that swept down from the north early last week. “We have a lot of things going on at once right now.”

On Thursday, most of the explosions appeared to be the result of troops blowing up some of the trove of captured munitions. U.S. airstrikes, artillery blasts and mortar fire have diminished substantially.

More civilians are emerging now, often carrying white flags, but they are still a rare sight in this beaten city. Some have gathered at places like Al Hadra al Muhammadiya mosque, once a hotbed of rebel activity but now a clinic and help center staffed by U.S.-allied Iraqi troops.

“What about my father and my uncles?” Yhedder Ahmed, 14, asked as Tucker stopped by the mosque. On a previous visit, the commander had promised to find out the status of the men, who were arrested as insurgents.

“Tell him that his father and uncles are doing well, but they were found with weapons and will remain in custody,” Tucker told the boy through an interpreter. “No harm will come to them.”

The Iraqi commander, Col. Saad Ali, was worried about what would happen as refugees begin returning to a city that lacked a functioning infrastructure or economy.

“The men must have jobs,” said Ali, who hails from the southern city of Basra.

Earlier in the week, an Iraqi who was waiting in line at the center was shot dead. In Fallouja, even seeking medical aid at a clinic sponsored by U.S. forces might be considered collaboration by some.

Across the street to the north, Marines used wheelchairs to lug ammo boxes and weapons next to a building bearing the inscription, Islamic Benevolent Committee of Fallouja. The two-story facility had apparently been a combination clinic and guerrilla command center.

The compound, U.S. commanders said, had been overrun while it was occupied by followers of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born militant said to have been based in Fallouja.

Inside, Marines found literature and banners of Zarqawi’s group, Jamaat al Tawhid wal Jihad, which has renamed itself the Qaeda Organization for Jihad in Iraq. A computer and files also were seized.

Outside, troops discovered two weapons caches in white metal containers, including antiaircraft missiles, land mines, mortar shells and AK-47 rifles. Lacking wheelbarrows, Marines used wheelchairs from the clinic to take the materiel to a vacant lot, where it was to be blown up.

Deep in the southeastern sector, a dense, mazelike neighborhood of junkyards and anonymous automotive service outlets, soldiers had cordoned off several blocks. This industrial zone had long been known as a redoubt of insurgents; it had been pummeled by airstrikes for weeks before the invasion.

Inside the cordoned zone, amid the dozens of seemingly identical storefront workshops, troops found a car bomb factory and, two doors down, a site where roadside bombs were manufactured.

At the car bomb site, parts of vehicle doors were hung on the walls. They were often removed to pack explosives, then reattached to the vehicles. A welding machine stood in the main work area alongside boxes of ammunition, blasting caps, timers and various explosive materials. Inside an office were dozens of license plates, presumably from the stolen vehicles used in attacks.

“This one was ready to go,” Walters said, pointing to the green Suburban with tinted windows. No one could explain how the vehicle got a 2004 Texas inspection sticker.

The vehicle, along with everything else in the shop and the bomb factory, was later destroyed in a booming explosion that shook the city.

In northeastern Fallouja, where some of the most intense fighting has been concentrated in recent days, Capt. Lee Johnson tracked insurgents.

Intelligence data led him to almost a dozen homes where suspected rebels were holed up, had stayed or had stored weapons. He found some of them sitting in a house, their athletic shoes off and their weapons nowhere to be seen.

“They all took their sneakers off and pretended to be civilians,” Johnson said.

As he spoke, he stood alongside a 6-foot bunker dug by insurgents. A metal slab placed atop the ditch was meant to provide cover. On the streets behind him, his troops -- backed by two tanks -- were going through houses, a hazardous process.

The streets were littered with spent ammunition from battles that occurred early in the invasion. Commanders suspected that guerrillas reoccupied some of the houses as troops pushed south.

U.S. forces estimate that as many as 1,600 guerrillas have been killed. Family members and Iraqi volunteers have removed some bodies, but the threat of booby-trapped corpses has prompted Iraqis to shy away from the grisly task.

On Thursday, U.S. teams began removing corpses to avert a health crisis. Members of one crew threw a grappling hook attached to a long line, then turned over the remains while taking cover. Other Marines kept their weapons trained on nearby vehicles, alert for attacks. After it was deemed safe, the bodies were quickly zipped into black vinyl bags and hoisted onto a 7-ton truck.

They were taken to a makeshift morgue with refrigeration units on the grounds of a former potato farm, Tucker said. There, he added, the people of Fallouja could claim the remains of their husbands, sons and fathers.