A top American general invited guerrillas in the battered city of Fallujah to join a cease-fire Saturday as Iraqi political leaders expressed growing anger over the death toll from more than five days of ferocious fighting between U.S. Marines and anti-occupation forces.
“This is an aspiration,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said, making it clear no deal had been reached with the other side. He said he was “hoping to get this message to the enemy through this press conference so they can join the cease-fire.”
The offer followed heavy fighting late Friday night in at least two areas of the Sunni stronghold, according to Arab news reports.
On the second front challenging occupation forces, militia loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr pledged Saturday not to attack U.S.-led troops during Shiite religious observances over the weekend. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims are expected in Karbala and other southern cities to mark Arbaeen, a Shiite holy day on Sunday, and U.S. officials have already said they would not challenge Sadr’s militia until after the holidays.
Fallujah has seen little respite in its violence. Marines offered to hold their fire Friday to let local and national Iraqi leaders discuss ways to end the fighting. Residents would also be given a chance to bury their dead, and families a chance to flee.
But the break lasted about 90 minutes as Marines resumed their assault after coming under sporadic attack, officials said. By nightfall, commanders had called in an AC-130 warplane to strafe targets in the city.
In his weekly radio address scheduled for Saturday, President Bush said Marines “are taking control of the city, block by block.” He also promised that “coalition forces will continue a multi-city offensive … until these enemies of democracy are dealt with.”
Council members upset
Criticism is building within the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. More members of Iraq’s interim government threatened to quit if the Marine offensive continued.
“If the situation gets worse, we are going to resign from the Governing Council,” said Mohsen Abdel Hamid, who is also a member of the Sunni Islamic Party, in a statement aired early Saturday on the Arab news channel Al Jazeera. The statement also called on “resistance fighters” in Fallujah to observe a cease-fire.
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As Fallujah raged, coalition forces moved to solidify gains made Friday in the Iraqi town of Kut, where 1,000 soldiers backed by tanks routed a Shiite militia loyal to Sadr, the cleric. The Americans said they had taken police stations and destroyed the cleric’s Kut offices; Sadr’s forces, however, still controlled much of Najaf and Karbala.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, coalition spokesmen would not confirm reports that as many as six foreigners–including possibly two soldiers–had been captured Friday. Initial unconfirmed reports said that two Americans and six Italians had been abducted. Their possible abductions came a day after three Japanese and two Palestinians were kidnapped.
On Friday in Fallujah, women, children and elderly residents streamed out of the dusty city in hundreds of cars, some camping outside town. Men of military age were turned back by U.S. soldiers at checkpoints on the edges of the city.
Other families used the brief lull to bury their dead in a soccer field used as a makeshift graveyard because the town’s cemeteries were located outside the city and thus were off-limits. According to hospital officials, more than 280 Iraqis have died in the fighting.
The U.S. launched its Fallujah offensive Monday in response to the killings and mutilation of four American security contractors on March 31. But the intensity and overwhelming military force being used has enraged much of the Iraqi public, generating sympathy among Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and also has angered members of Iraq’s interim government.
On Friday, interim Human Rights Minister Abdul-Basit Turki resigned in protest, while Shiite council member Abdel-Karim Mahmoud al-Mohammedawi suspended his membership. Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer, another council member, threatened to resign if the U.S. did not reach a peaceful solution in Fallujah.
And Adnan Pachachi, a Governing Council member and one of America’s staunchest allies, appeared on several Arab television channels throughout the day Friday to criticize the Marine offensive.
“A lot of innocents are getting killed by using too much power,” Pachachi told Al Jazeera. “It’s not right. It has no justification.”
Fighting called justified
Coalition spokesman Dan Senor said the fighting was justified in response to the killing of the contractors, whose burned and mutilated bodies were dragged through the streets by a frenzied mob. “We can’t just turn our heads and look away,” Senor said.
Turki’s resignation came on the heels of a reshuffle in Iraq’s interim government sparked by the unexpected resignation Thursday of the interior minister, Nori al-Badran.
On Friday, Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, named businessman Samir Sumaidi to succeed al-Badran. Bremer also appointed Mouwafak al-Rubaie, a Governing Council member, to the new national security adviser position.
Across southern Iraq on Friday, low-level fighting continued as coalition forces moved to crush members of al-Mahdi Army, the shadowy 6,000- to 10,000-member militia controlled by Sadr, 30, a scion of respected Muslim clerics who is wanted on murder charges in the slaying of another cleric last year.
Sadr is believed to be hiding in Najaf, where al-Mahdi militiamen have taken control of the center of town.
Kimmitt said coalition forces had not moved strongly against the holy cities ofNajaf and neighboring Karbala in the lead-up to Sunday, the Shiite holy day of Arbaeen. About 1.2 million pilgrims were expected to pack into Karbala to mark the end of the 40-day mourning period for a Shiite saint.
Kimmitt said about 1,000 U.S. soldiers were ordered to move toward Najaf on Sunday but changed course and headed toward Kut, where Sadr’s men had taken control and forced Ukrainian soldiers to retreat.
In Baghdad’s Firdaus Square, where Marines helped Iraqis pull down a statue of Saddam Hussein a year ago Friday, two posters of Sadr were ripped down by U.S. troops. By nightfall Friday, the city that celebrated Hussein’s downfall a year ago was almost empty as Iraqis stayed indoors.
On Friday, one soldier was killed in the north of the city when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb and then came under fire, an Army spokesman said. A second soldier was killed when a fuel convoy was attacked near Baghdad’s airport, a coalition spokesman said. The deaths brought to 46 the number of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq this week.
An Iraqi driver was also killed in the attack on the convoy, the spokesman said. But reports by journalists who said they witnessed the attack or its aftermath said nine people were killed and at least one American possibly was abducted.