Fallujah ceasefire holds but death toll tops 600

A fragile ceasefire held between Sunni fighters and US marines in the besieged city of Fallujah, where doctors said more than 600 Iraqis, including civilians, were killed in the past week.

Near Baghdad, gunmen shot down a US attack helicopter, killing two crewmen.

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

Most of the Iraqis killed in Fallujah in fighting that started last Monday were women, children and elderly, said the director of the city hospital, Rafie al-Issawi.

A 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 football 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 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 road 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 US soldier and two American civilians and kidnapping another American.

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

Seven Chinese citizens were seized north of Fallujah last night

China’s official Xinhua News Agency later issued a brief report citing a Chinese diplomat in Baghdad as saying: ”Seven Chinese were kidnapped by armed men in central Iraq.”

Insurgents who kidnapped other foreigners this week began releasing some captives. A Briton 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 Monday morning, and Japan expressed worry about their safety.

Japan’s top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda, said: “At one point we were able to make the judgment from various perspectives that they were safe, but now that’s unconfirmed.”

The US military on Sunday reported 12 more American soldiers killed in fighting on Friday and Saturday – half of them in Baghdad.

Early today, the military said in a statement that three marines were killed in fighting yesterday in Anbar province in western Iraq.

The deaths brought to 62 the number of American forces killed since the new fronts of violence erupted April 4. Nearly 900 Iraqis have been killed in the same period. At least 664 US soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

The Washington Post reported today that American troops found evidence of suicide squads and foreign fighters at an abandoned factory in Fallujah.

Among the items troops found yesterday were sacks full of chemical-coated rocks, leather belts stuffed with explosive putty, boxes of batteries with wires taped to them and bomb-making instructions, the newspaper reported.

Islamic books, pamphlets, tapes and farewell letters in Arabic also found suggested that some of the men were not Iraqis, but foreign Sunni Muslims who had gone to Iraq to fight in a holy war, the newspaper said. It quoted an unidentified marine captain as saying a 16 member terror cell was operating from the site.

President George Bush braced Americans for the possibility of more casualties in Iraq while saying the US-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,” Bush said.

But he said the United States was “open to suggestions” about resolving the siege, referring to negotiations between Iraqi politicians and Fallujah city officials.

Governing Council members were holding discussions with followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia rose up in a bloody revolt this week against coalition troops and largely controls three southern cities, Karbala, Kufa and Najaf.