Iraq

Iraqis cheer changing of guard

The "Fallujah Bridge' takes shape as Marines pull back. Elsewhere, a U.S. soldier is killed.

FALLUJAH, Iraq - Gunmen waved their weapons in Fallujah's streets and outside car windows Saturday, cheering what they called a victory as U.S. forces pulled back. But the Marines insisted they weren't going far and a new Iraqi force taking the front line will root out die-hard insurgents.

The new "Fallujah Brigade," put together by Iraqi generals from Saddam Hussein's ousted regime likely will include some former army soldiers who fought American forces over the past month, Marine Lt. Gen. James Conway said.

He promised, however, that anyone who has "blood on their hands" would not be allowed to stay in the force.

Another military official acknowledged that the United States didn't know who the individual members of the force were and that its fighters and commanders had to be vetted to ensure that they are not connected to crimes of the Hussein regime. The force's leadership could be changed soon because of that, the official told the Associated Press.

Scores of Iraqis gathered in the streets Saturday morning, some flashing "V" for victory signs and raising the Iraqi flag. Motorists drove through the streets, shouting "Islam, it's your day!" and "We redeem Islam with our blood!"

Some were masked with kuffeyahs and raised automatic weapons, members of the insurgency that put up stiff resistance against the Marines. Some guerrillas drove through the city, honking horns and waving their guns out the windows.

Meanwhile, violence continued Saturday, exactly a year after President Bush stood aboard an aircraft carrier and declared that major combat in Iraq had ended.

A U.S. soldier was killed when a rocket-propelled grenade hit his convoy near the town of Qarraya, 45 miles south of Mosul, the military said. A second soldier died Saturday of wounds suffered the day before in a roadside bombing in the same area.

In another Saturday bombing, two foreign contractors were killed and five foreigners wounded in an attack in the northern city of Mosul, according to the U.S. military.

A British foot patrol came under attack in the southern city of Amarah, sparking a gunbattle with insurgents that left five Iraqis dead and six British soldiers wounded, according to a British forces spokesman.

Witnesses said the five Iraqis killed were members of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army. The clashes were ongoing Saturday night, said British Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Jonathan Arnold.

The new "Fallujah Brigade," led by Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh, fanned out and imposed a cordon around nearly the entire southern half of Fallujah, replacing Marines who were pulling back to set up a second cordon, some 5 miles from the city.

The willingness to install a relatively unknown armed force with ties to the ousted regime at the forefront of the Fallujah standoff was a sign of U.S. eagerness to find a way out of the siege, which raised an international outcry and angered many Iraqi leaders who supported the United States.

A U.S. officer told the Associated Press the Fallujah model, though not a "hard and fast" policy, might be applied elsewhere.

The force came about suddenly - a dramatic reversal less than a week after the United States was threatening to launch a new offensive into Fallujah. The former generals approached Marine commanders and offered to take over security duties in the city using their former soldiers, the military official said.

Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, insisted the U.S. withdrawal did not mean a let-up in the pursuit of the guerrillas. He said Saleh - who served in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard and as a commander of the Iraqi army's 38th Infantry Division - has presented a plan to confront the city's hard-core militants.

"They understand our view that these people must be killed or captured," Conway said. "They have not flinched. And their commander has said as much to his assembly of officers."

Conway said the Iraqi force will be made up of 1,100 fighters, mostly former army soldiers. The Fallujah Brigade effectively turns some of the insurgents - those who joined for money or resentment at losing their jobs when Hussein's army was disbanded - against the more ideological anti-U.S. guerrillas.

Former Iraqi generals are putting together the force, and the ex-soldiers have been their "recruiting pool," Conway said. He said he could not rule out that some of the recruits might have fired on his Marines.

"I'd like to think that has not been the case, but I can't say categorically that it hasn't," he said.

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