US marines pulling out of Fallujah

TEN American soldiers were killed in Iraq yesterday as marines who had been pounding the hotbed city of Fallujah withdrew, handing over command to one of Saddam's top generals.

Meanwhile, in Washington, US President George W Bush said he and Vice President Dick Cheney answered every question yesterday from the panel investigating the September 11 attacks and denied the joint appearance was intended to keep their story straight.

After the tentative deal was announced in Fallujah, marines and guerrillas skirmished, with blasts and sporadic gunfire heard from the northern part of the Sunni city. The agreement, which was still being finalised last night, came after intense international pressure on the US to find a peaceful solution to the stand-off that killed hundreds of Iraqis in the Sunni city.

Meanwhile, in the White House Rose Garden, Mr Bush yesterday declared his three-hour session at the 9/11 hearings a success and said he hoped it would lead to recommendations about how to guard against future attacks. He dismissed criticism from Democrats that he wanted to appear with Mr Cheney so they would not contradict each other.

"Look, if we had something to hide we wouldn't have met with them in the first place. We answered all their questions. As I say, I came away good about the session because I wanted them to know how I set strategy, how we run the White House, how we deal with threats," Mr Bush said.

A key area of questioning for Mr Bush was his response to an August 6, 2001, intelligence memo that said al-Qaida members were in the US before the 9/11 attacks and the FBI had detected suspicious patterns of activity "consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks".

Mr Bush has said the memo's usefulness was limited because it did not point to a specific target.