2 US troops dead; planes hammer Fallujah

BAGHDAD -- American warplanes pounded Fallujah with missiles yesterday as insurgents fought running battles with coalition forces in the volatile western Iraqi city. The US military said two Americans died in separate events.

Meanwhile, several detained leaders of Saddam Hussein's former regime began refusing meals in apparent protest against their upcoming trials, US military officials and a lawyer said.

In Jordan, Hussein's lawyers argued ahead of the first anniversary of his capture, which is today, that the former president was being held illegally by US and Iraqi authorities.

''It was more of a forced abduction that later became compulsory concealment and solitary confinement, acts rejected by all international conventions," said a statement released yesterday by the team, which cited human rights conventions Washington allegedly had violated.

The military said yesterday that a soldier was killed Saturday in a roadside blast in the capital's northern suburbs. Three other soldiers were wounded in the ambush. A US Marine died in action yesterday in Anbar Province, a vast region comprising the battleground cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

Meanwhile, Iraq's postwar political hopefuls continued jostling for position ahead of the Jan. 30 elections, the first such polls to be held since Hussein's ouster.

Two moderate, mainly Sunni Muslim parties announced they would field slates for the polls, indicating an apparent strengthening of support for the vote among the religious minority, despite calls from some Sunni politicians for a boycott.

Sunnis traditionally have enjoyed significant privilege in Iraq, but have lost their political ascendancy since Hussein's fall. The country's majority Shi'ites, numbering 60 percent of the population, are expected to exploit their advantage and dominate the postelection legislature.

''They [the Sunnis] realized that there was no chance for postponing and that it's better to participate," said Nehro Mohammed Abdul-Karim Kasnazan, a leader of the Coalition of Iraqi National Unity, which is fielding a 275-member slate for the polls.

The Constitutional Monarchy Movement, a moderate Sunni-dominated group seeking the restoration of a constitutional monarchy, also announced a list of 275 election candidates. The slate is headed by Sharif Ali, a cousin of Iraq's last king who was killed in a 1958 military coup, and includes Kurds and Shi'ites.

A former Governing Council member, Naseer al-Chadarchi, announced that his Patriotic and Democratic Party, another moderate Sunni fringe movement, would field at least 40 candidates, including Shi'ites from southern Iraq, according to aide Omar al-Ma'arouf.

''Despite the party's insistence on postponing the elections, it will participate with a separate list" of candidates, Ma'arouf said.

Iraq's US-backed interim government has said the Jan. 30 vote must go ahead, despite a rampant insurgency fueled mainly by Sunni extremists targeting US forces and Iraq's nascent security forces in a bid to derail the elections.

''We have a full desire that all Iraqis will participate, despite their color, sex, race, religion, or their political background, because Iraq belongs to all Iraqis," interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said on Al-Iraqiya TV.

Fallujah, the scene of a weeklong US-led offensive last month to uproot insurgents based in the city, erupted in more violence yesterday, starting when American and Iraqi forces clashed with guerrillas in several suburbs.

US airstrikes then targeted suspected insurgent hide-outs in response.

''The strikes were conducted throughout the day and were called in by troops in [armed] contact with and observing the enemy moving from house to house," said Lieutenant Lyle Gilbert, a spokesman.

Gilbert had no details on whether there were any casualties.

Fallujan Abdullah Ahmed said the fighting started after US troops brought 700 to 800 men into the city to clear rubble from damage caused by the offensive last month.