Iraqi force replaces Marines in Fallujah
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Led by one of Saddam Hussein's generals, Iraqi troops replaced US Marines yesterday and raised the Iraqi flag at the entrance to Fallujah under a plan to end the monthlong siege of the city. A suicide car bomb on the outskirts that killed two Americans and wounded six did not disrupt the pullout of Marines from bitterly contested parts of the city.
The two deaths on the final day of April raised the US death toll to 136, making it the deadliest month for American forces -- as well as for Iraqis -- since President Bush launched the war in March 2003.
US officials provided no further details on the bombing.
The shift of security responsibilities to Iraqis was a move toward ending the intense fighting that had evoked strong international criticism, including from America's Iraqi allies.
Negotiations also were taking place in the southern city of Najaf, where tribal leaders and police agreed to a three-day truce as part of a plan to resolve a standoff between soldiers and militiamen loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
A defiant Sadr said, ''America is the enemy of Islam."
Elsewhere, Iraqi police Colonel Ahmad al-Khazraji was shot to death Thursday night in Baghdad, the US command said. The body of a Baghdad local official also was found hanged with a sign on his chest that said ''al-Mahdi Army business," a reference to Sadr's militia.
Convoys of US troops and equipment could be seen heading out of parts of Fallujah, replaced by Iraqi troopers in red berets under the flag that flew over Hussein's Iraq.
Residents said that by yesterday evening, US troops had left several neighborhoods that had seen heavy fighting, including Nazzal, Shuhada, Nueimiyah, and an industrial area. As US Marines moved out, Iraqi police and civil defense units moved in.
US military guards permitted civilian cars to enter the city after searches.
''Initially, it appears that the transition to the Fallujah Protective Army is working," said Marine Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne. ''It's a delicate situation. The Fallujah Protective Army is the Iraqi solution we've all been looking for in this area."
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, coalition deputy operations chief, said the Marines were not ''withdrawing" from Fallujah, one of the most hostile cities in the tense Sunni Triangle, but were simply ''repositioning."
Asked whether the Marines were leaving, Kimmitt replied, ''Nothing could be further from the truth." He said the Marines would maintain a strong presence ''in and around Fallujah."
''The coalition objectives remain unchanged -- to eliminate armed groups, collect and positively control all heavy weapons, and turn over foreign fighters and disarm anti-Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah," Kimmitt said.
Nevertheless, the move seemed aimed at reducing the American profile at a time of growing opposition among Iraqis to the U.S.-led occupation.
The security plan also marked a shift in US strategy, which had marginalized former members of Hussein's Ba'ath Party and abolished the Iraqi Army last year.
The commander of the new Fallujah brigade, Major General Jassim Mohammed Saleh, once served in Hussein's Republican Guard. At the checkpoint at the main eastern entrance to the city, Saleh, shook hands with Colonel John Tullin, commander of the First Marine Regiment, as Iraqi forces raised their own flag over the checkpoint.
''You are our dear friends," Saleh told Tullin.
Saleh, 49, has strong family ties to the besieged city, said relatives and former colleagues. Another former Iraqi general, Mohammed al-Askari, said Saleh served in Iraq's elite Republican Guards in the 1980s and later commanded the 38th Infantry Division of the Iraqi Army.
He then was promoted to head all of the Iraqi Army's infantry forces, Askari said. His last posting was as a division commander in the Jerusalem army, which initially was founded to liberate Jerusalem but grew into a vast paramilitary force.
Under the plan, a force of 600 to 1,100 Iraqis, many of them former soldiers from the Fallujah area, initially would man checkpoints. Marines will remain on or near the city's perimeter and at a later stage conduct their own patrols inside the city, a Pentagon official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
General John Abizaid, chief of US military operations in the Middle East, said Washington was sticking by most of the objectives it outlined when the Marines stormed Fallujah on April 5 -- mainly to seize men who killed and mutilated four US contractors. But Abizaid conceded that the killers probably had fled the city. He also seemed to considerably soften previous demands that the guerrillas hand over foreign fighters and heavy weapons to US forces. ''Clearly, we will not tolerate the presence of foreign fighters," he said. ''We will insist on the heavy weapons coming off the streets. We want the Marines to have freedom of maneuver along with the Iraqi security forces."
Foreign fighters, too, may have fled the city, a top US military official in Baghdad said Thursday. Others question whether foreign fighters ever joined the battle in Fallujah, characterizing it instead as a homegrown uprising.
