Falluja truce holds, Czechs and Russians missing

8.30am - By FADEL BADRAN

FALLUJA - A shaky truce between US Marines and Sunni Muslim guerrillas held in Falluja on Monday after further talks to calm Iraq's bloodiest fighting since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The US military said two US soldiers and seven American contractors were missing in Iraq, where three Japanese are among foreigners being held by guerrillas.

Czech Television says two of its staff are missing and may have been kidnapped. In addition, Czech state radio reporter Vit Pohanka, who was due to make a trip from Baghdad to Amman, is unaccounted for, the local CTK news agency says.

Eleven Russians working for an energy company in Iraq have been kidnapped in Baghdad, Al Jazeera television reported, citing an unidentified Russian source. The television station said its correspondent in Moscow was told about the kidnapping by the Russian company for which the Russians worked.

The official Xinhua news agency in China today said seven Chinese nationals kidnapped in Iraq had been released and taken to a "secret place." There was no independent confirmation.

Mohsen Abdel Hamid, a member of Iraq's US-appointed Governing Council, said 12 foreign hostages had been freed earlier after the Association of Muslim Clerics issued an edict condemning hostage-taking. He did not give the nationalities.

General John Abizaid, head of US Central Command, told a news conference he had asked the Pentagon for two more "strong and mobile" brigades to be sent to Iraq, but the military denied there was chaos in the country.

US-led forces, who have been struggling for months to crush a Sunni insurgency in central Iraq, now face a Shi'ite revolt led by the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the south.

"The mission of US forces is to kill or capture Moqtada al-Sadr," the top US general in Iraq, Ricardo Sanchez, told the news conference.

The US military said coalition forces had lost about 70 dead and killed about 10 times that number of rebels this month.

The coalition death toll compares to 89 killed in action in the three-week war that toppled Saddam. At least 474 US troops have died in combat since the war began in March last year.

With President Bush seeking re-election in November and Iraq high on the campaign agenda, the US-led administration in Baghdad said it was vital to defeat guerrillas before a planned US handover of power to Iraqis on June 30.

"It is critical that we cleanse the Iraqi body politic of the poison that remains after 35 years of Saddam Hussein's totalitarian rule," said spokesman Dan Senor. "The task will only become more difficult down the road."

Abizaid said: "There is not a purely US military solution to any of the particular problems that we're facing here."

Despite some overnight clashes in Falluja, some 50km west of Baghdad, Iraqi mediators said they had secured an extension to a truce that gave the town some respite at the weekend. Mohammed Qubaisi, of the Iraqi Islamic Party, said more talks were expected Tuesday.

However, US Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said US Marines were ready to "complete the destruction of enemy forces" in Falluja, unless political negotiations produced results.

Kimmitt had no word on civilian deaths. Rafa Hayad al-Issawi, director of Falluja's main hospital, said he believed more than 600 Iraqis had been killed in the town.

The Marines attacked rebels in Falluja last week in response to the murder and mutilation of four American private security guards ambushed in the town on March 31.

Kimmitt said US-led forces had deployed "a significant amount of combat power" to secure roads west and south of Baghdad. But guerrillas struck again, setting a US military truck ablaze on the road to Baghdad airport, witnesses said.

Many Iraqis, including some Governing Council members, have been shocked at the ferocity of the Falluja fighting.

Fleeing civilians said they were haunted by the violence.

"I could see many bodies in the streets. Hundreds were lying in the street," said Samir Rabee, who escaped with relatives and eight other families in the back of a refrigeration truck.

Sadr, who has his own Mehdi Army militia, is widely believed to be in Najaf, a holy city for Iraq's Shi'ite majority.

In the past few days, US troops have been moving into Shi'ite areas of central and southern Iraq, where a Polish-led multinational force is responsible for security.

US soldiers outside Najaf said they were ready for battle unless there was an Iraqi solution to the standoff with Sadr.

"We are here waiting to be unleashed. We are more than ready," said Colonel Dana Pittard, commander of the 3rd Brigade Task Force deployed some 20km from Najaf.

Sadr's militia controls central Najaf, but some Iraqi police returned to their offices in the city Monday, witnesses said.

Political sources said talks had taken place between Sadr and a delegation from Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a more moderate voice than Sadr.

A Shi'ite party said it was mediating between Sadr and US officials to try and arrange a truce. The US-led administration denied it was involved in any talks with Sadr.

Guerrillas have kidnapped an unknown number of foreigners.

The seven American contractors, who worked for the US company Kellogg, Brown & Root, went missing after an attack on a US fuel convoy just west of Baghdad Friday.

A Reuters photographer saw at least nine bodies after the attack. Thomas Hamill, an American seized in the ambush, told a television crew that witnessed his abduction that he was the only survivor.

The captors of the three Japanese threatened last week to kill them if Japanese forces were not withdrawn from Iraq.

However, a self-proclaimed mediator told Japan's Kyodo news agency the abductors had agreed not to kill them.

Japan, sharply divided over Koizumi's dispatch of troops to help rebuild Iraq, has been on tenterhooks since the kidnappers released a video Thursday showing the three civilians, one just 18 years old, blindfolded and with guns to their heads.

Kyodo said Muzhir al-Duleimi, head of the previously unknown League for the Defence of the Rights of the Iraqi People, had received information from the kidnappers that the hostages were in good health.

A British contractor who had been held for six days was released Sunday.

A masked man said on a videotape Sunday that eight other hostages -- three Pakistanis, two Turks, an Indian, a Nepalese and a Filipino -- had also been freed.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq