Losing it 1
Thousands in Fallouja Flee; Council Totters
A cease-fire in the city crumbles after less than two hours. Five more U.S. troops die in Iraq in the coalition's deadliest week since Hussein's ouster.
By Tony Perry and Nicholas Riccardi
Times Staff Writers
April 10, 2004
FALLOUJA, Iraq — A cease-fire between U.S. Marines and insurgents collapsed less than two hours after it took effect Friday as tens of thousands of women and children fled this besieged city and occupation officials scrambled to stave off a revolt from their handpicked Governing Council.
On the anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, authorities reported that five more U.S. troops had been killed in the last two days, bringing to 49 the number of American deaths since Sunday.
As the deadliest week for U.S. troops since Hussein's ouster neared its end, Marines launched a major ground offensive this morning in Fallouja, bolstered by a third battalion that boosted troop strength from 2,500 to 3,750.
Iraqi insurgents said they had taken six more hostages — two Americans and four Italians — a day after militants showed footage of three Japanese captives whom they threatened to burn unless Tokyo withdrew its troops, which are noncombat.
By most accounts, the Iraqi dead numbered in the hundreds. In Fallouja, residents took advantage of a lull in the fighting to bury dozens of their dead in makeshift graves in the city's soccer stadium. As today's offensive began, at least 18 more were killed.
A week of intense clashes between coalition troops and a variety of Sunni and Shiite Muslim fighters triggered concern that the coalition had lost control of the country.
"The lid of the pressure cooker has come off," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told BBC Radio. "There is no doubt that the current situation is very serious and it is the most serious that we have faced.
"It is plainly the fact today that there are larger numbers of people, and they are people on the ground, Iraqis, not foreign fighters, who are engaged in this insurgency," Straw said.
