IRAQ: US forces turned to a former general in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard to help end a stand-off with guerrillas in Falluja yesterday, but there was no end to violence and another two Marines were killed.
Some of the US troops fighting guerrillas in the Sunni bastion pulled back and, in a reversal of Washington's refusal to deal with members of Saddam's regime, former general Jassim Mohammed Saleh said he would lead a force to restore order.
"We have now begun forming a new emergency military force," Gen Saleh told Reuters, saying Falluja "rejected" the US presence in the month-long stand-off.
But US commanders said they were still in charge in the city, some 50 km west of Baghdad and in the heart of the "Sunni Triangle" that has been a hotbed of guerrilla attacks against the US-led occupation of Iraq.
"We are certainly not withdrawing from Falluja," US spokesman Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt told a Baghdad news conference as Marines and their armoured vehicles pulled back from siege positions.
Gen Saleh's force of 600-1,000 former Iraqi soldiers would work "alongside" the Marines, Gen Kimmitt said. "This is just an Iraqi component of the coalition forces surrounding Falluja."
But Gen Saleh, cheered by crowds waving the Saddam-era Iraqi flag as he drove through his home town in his old uniform, said local people wanted Falluja to be run only by Iraqi forces.
Marine commanders, whose men maintained positions in parts of the city where fighting has been heaviest, said they would continue operations against guerrillas who refused to hand over heavy weaponry and against suspected foreign Islamic militants. Explosions in the east of the city showed fighting was still going on.
A suicide car bomber killed two Marines and wounded six close to their base near Falluja, adding to the death toll in the bloodiest month for US forces in Iraq.
Gen Kimmitt said US troops were still aiming to capture the killers of four American security guards, whose much-televised mutilated bodies prompted the US crackdown a month ago.
The peace deal appeared to have averted an all-out assault on the city of 300,000 - for the time being.
Local doctors say 600 people have been killed in the siege, a source of grievance for many Iraqis, notably the once-dominant Sunni minority in the heartland of support for Saddam.
People who had fled homes in Falluja lined up at military checkpoints to return, but US troops let few pass into the battered city.
Winning over Iraqi opinion is important for Washington as it prepares to hand formal sovereignty to an interim government in Baghdad on June 30th, while leaving more than 100,000 US troops in a country where many are hostile.
Since President Bush declared an end to "major combat operations" a year ago today, 428 US service personnel have been killed in action in Iraq, 127 of them in April alone. Fewer than 100 died in the three weeks it took to topple Saddam. - (Reuters)