World

Clock Ticks In Fallujah

April 23, 2004 / 6:30 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Guerrillas and residents in Fallujah have "days, not weeks" to turn in heavy weapons, the top Marine commander in Iraq said Thursday, warning that fighting could resume and that a Marine push to take the city could be costly for both sides.

The stark warning came two days after implementation began in agreement under which city leaders called on insurgents to hand over their heavy weapons in return for a U.S. pledge to hold back on plans to storm the city and allow the return of families that fled the city.

But Marines have said that during the past two days, few weapons have been turned in and most the weapons that were surrendered were old or unusable.

CBS News Correspondent Steve Knight reports the Marines have called in reinforcements, with 3,500 troops now surrounding Fallujah. But the top commander there worries that insurgents have also used the pause in fighting to improve their defenses.

In southern Iraq, a spokesman for British forces responsible for the area lowered the reported death toll to 50 from a series of near simultaneous suicide bombings that targeted Iraqi police stations on Wednesday.

The spokesman, Capt. Hisham Halawy, said a review of hospital showed 50 dead, 20 of them children.

Coalition officials said Thursday that it was too early to blame al Qaeda for the attack.

In other developments:

A foreigner was killed and his Iraqi translator was wounded by gunmen who opened fire on their armored vechicle in Baghdad on Thursday. The foreigner's nationality was not immediately known.

An American woman working in Kuwait has been fired by a U.S. government contractor for releasing pictures of flag-draped coffins of American soldiers, the Seattle Times reports. The Pentagon has sharply restricted any images of coffins.

The Iraqi health minister said Thursday that 576 Iraqi insurgents and civilians had died during the sharp upturn in violence since April 1. That's sharply lower than a U.S. military estimate of about 1,000 insurgents killed.

A top U.S. military commander said that 10 percent of Iraqi security forces "worked against" U.S. forces during the past three weeks' flare-up of fighting in Fallujah and the southern city of Najaf, a sign of how difficult it will be for the United States to assemble an Iraqi army and police force.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is making another trip to the Capitol on Thursday to brief Republican lawmakers about the situation in Iraq.

The Pentagon's top general said Wednesday that increased violence in Iraq is pushing the cost of the war over budget, threatening a $4 billion shortfall by late summer. The Bush administration asked for no new Iraq money in this year's defense budget.

Human Rights Watch criticized the United States, saying that U.S. authorities had failed to provide clear or consistent information on the treatment of some 10,000 civilian detainees.

German engineering giant Siemens AG has pulled its employees out of Iraq because of security concerns, the Iraqi electricity minister said. The New York Times reports General Electric is also suspending operations.

The government that takes over June 30 will have only "limited sovereignty" and won't be able to give orders to coalition troops that remain, officials say.

Islamic countries urged the United Nations to return to Iraq and take "a central role" in restoring peace and security, citing concerns about heavy civilian casualties and alleged abuses by the U.S.-led occupying forces.

A group that describes itself as "anti-American" is threatening to attack diplomatic compounds, airlines and public transportation systems in eight countries that support the U.S. or have plans to send troops to Iraq. The Philippines said it would not pull troops out.

In Fallujah, Lt. Gen. James Conway warned that Falluah residents have "days not weeks" to implement the accord reached this weekend or else fighting could resume.

He said only about a pickup truck load's worth of weapons were turned in Wednesday.

"It was junk, things I wouldn't ask my Marines to begin to fire," said Lt. Gen. James Conway, the top Marine commander in Iraq. "We were not pleased at all with the turn-in (of weapons) we saw yesterday. The volume probably amounted to a pickup truck full."

Conway warned that patience is wearing thin and questioned whether the civic leaders who negotiated with U.S. officials had much influence over the insurgents.

"We are somewhat questioning whether they represent the people of Fallujah because it is our estimate that the people of Fallujah have not responded well to the agreement that was made in this very room," Conway said.

U.S. Marines halted efforts to allow families who had fled amid fighting to return home to Fallujah, a step that was to be taken alongside disarmament.

It was still too early to say who was behind the Basra attacks, a spokesman for the British forces responsible for the area said Thursday.

"We can't discount al Qaeda, we can't discount former regime loyalists. It is too early to start speculating," Halawy said.

Suicide attackers detonated five car bombs — all but one of them simultaneously — targeting police buildings in Basra, Iraq's second largest city Wednesday, striking rush-hour crowds just as buses carrying kindergartners and school girls were passing by.

Police discovered two car bombs before they were detonated and arrested three men in the vehicles, said Basra Gov. Wael Abdul-Latif

U.S. coalition officials said they believed those attacks were planned by a Jordanian al Qaeda linked militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who they say plans a campaign of massive attacks on Shiites in order to spark a civil war between Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority and Sunni minority.

Abdul-Latif pointed to the similarities between that attack and the Basra bombings in making his link to al Qaeda.

But a U.S. counterterrorism official said it was "just premature to draw any conclusions."