World

Shaky Truce In Fallujah: 600 Dead

April 12, 2004 / 6:49 AM EDT / CBS/AP

A fragile cease-fire held between Sunni insurgents and U.S. Marines in the besieged city of Fallujah, where Iraqis said more than 600 civilians were killed in the past week. Near Baghdad, gunmen shot down a U.S. attack helicopter, killing two crewmembers.

Also, the military suggested it is open to a negotiated solution in its showdown with a radical Shiite cleric in the south.

According to the the director of the city hospital, Rafie al-Issawi, most of the Iraqis killed in Fallujah in fighting that started last Monday were women, children and elderly. But a U.S. Marine commander disputed that, saying most of the dead were probably insurgents.

Fallujah residents took advantage of the lull in fighting to bury their dead in two soccer fields. One of the fields had rows of freshly dug graves, some marked on headstones as children or with the names of women.

The Fallujah violence spilled over to the nearby western entrance of Baghdad, where gunmen shot down an American AH-64 Apache helicopter. As a team moved in to secure the bodies of the two dead crewmen, a large force of tanks and troops pushed down the highway outside the Iraqi capital, aiming to crush insurgents.

Gunmen have run rampant in the Abu Ghraib district west of Baghdad for three days, attacking fuel convoys, killing a U.S. soldier and two American civilians and kidnapping another American.

The captors of Thomas Hamill, an American who works for a U.S. contractor in Iraq, threatened to kill and burn him unless U.S. troops end their assault on Fallujah, west of Baghdad, by 6 a.m. Sunday. The deadline passed with no word on Hamill's fate.

The Arab TV station Al-Arabiya reported that insurgents kidnapped seven Chinese north of Fallujah on Sunday evening, citing Chinese diplomatic sources. No further details were immediately available.

Insurgents who kidnapped other foreigners this week began releasing some captives. A British hostage was freed, and other kidnappers said they were freeing eight captives of various nationalities. Other insurgents who kidnapped two Japanese men and a woman said Saturday they would free their captives within 24 hours, but they had not been freed by Sunday night.

The U.S. military on Sunday reported 12 more U.S. soldiers killed in fighting on Friday and Saturday - half of them in Baghdad. The deaths brought to 59 the number of American soldier killed since the new fronts of violence erupted April 4. Nearly 900 Iraqis have been killed in the same period. At least 661 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

In other developments:

A battalion of the U.S.-created Iraqi army refused to go to Fallujah to support U.S. troops earlier this week, senior U.S. Army officers told The Washington Post. They said the incident marked the first time U.S. commanders asked the postwar Iraqi army to take part in major combat operations. Large numbers of Iraqi security forces have also stopped doing their jobs, the Post reported.

A U.S. attack helicopter was shot down near Baghdad on Sunday, killing two crewmembers. Gunmen ambushed Iraqi police before dawn Sunday in the northern city of Kirkuk, sparking a battle joined by U.S. troops. Four attackers were killed, said Iraqi Col. Sarhad Qadir.

President Bush, attending an Easter service at a chapel at Fort Hood, Texas, braced the country for the possibility of more American casualties in Iraq while saying the U.S.-led mission is just. "It was a tough week last week and my prayers and thoughts are with those who pay the ultimate price for our security," the president said. "Our troops are taking care of business. Their job is to make Iraq more secure so that a peaceful Iraq can emerge."

Kidnappings and battles to retake whole cities are signs that Sunnis and Shiites - sworn enemies - are joining forces to fight the U.S. occupation, reports CBS News Correspondent Martha Teichner. This past week has brought a sea change in the armed opposition to the United States, says Richard Betts, an expert in military strategy and terrorism from Columbia University. "Whether this massive resistance and the coordination between different Iraqi interest groups grows is the real question now. If it does, we're in very deep trouble."

Graphic video footage aired on Arabic television Sunday showed the bodies of two dead Westerners — possibly a pair of Americans seen by APTN cameramen on Friday being dragged out of a car on the Abu Ghraib highway.

In southern Iraq, some 1.5 million Shiite pilgrims marked one of their holiest religious days, al-Arbaeen. In the city of Karbala, hundreds of Shiite militiamen — but no police — patrolled the street preparing for a possible U.S. assault against rebellious followers of al-Sadr.

In Fallujah, Sunni insurgents and Marines agreed to a cease-fire that started early Sunday and will last until the evening amid talks between Iraqi officials on how to end the violence. Members of the Iraqi Governing Council were holding a second day of negotiations with city representatives Sunday in an attempt to win the handover of Iraqis who killed and mutilated four American civilians on March 31 and of other militants. Hundreds of U.S. reinforcements moved in place on the city edge, joining 1,200 Marines and nearly 900 Iraqi security forces already involved in the fighting.

Bodies were being buried in Fallujah's soccer fields as residents took advantage of a pause in fighting since Friday to tend to casualties.

At one of the fields, dubbed the "Graveyard of the Martyrs" by residents, an AP reporter saw rows of freshly dug graves with wooden planks for headstones over an area about 30 yards wide by more than 100 yards.

Some of the headstones had names of women and other names were noted as children. Khalaf al-Jumaili, a volunteer helping bury bodies at the field, said more than 300 people had been interred there.

Volunteers were seen carrying bodies in blankets and lowering them into graves while bystanders shouted, "Martyr, martyr!"

It was not known how many were buried at the other soccer field.

Asked Sunday about the number of Iraqi casualties in Fallujah, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt referred reporters to Marine spokesmen. But he insisted that Marines are "tremendously precise" in their operations and suggested insurgents were hiding among civilians, causing civilian deaths.

Nearly a third of Fallujah's 200,000 people fled the city during the lull in fighting.

During the past week's fighting, Marines and insurgents have battled in residential neighborhoods, sometimes around mosques, with the Marines calling in tanks and helicopter gunships for support. AC-130 warplanes have also been used, and Marine snipers have taken up positions on buildings.

Marines say insurgents have used at least one mosque as a firebase to attack American troops. Witnesses in the city have reported Marine snipers firing from a separate mosque's minaret on insurgents below.