Fallujah fighters have 'just days' to disarm, say marines

US Marines have warned guerrillas in Iraq’s war-torn city of Fallujah that they have only days to hand over their heavy weapons or face a possible attack.

So far the rebels have turned in mainly dud rockets, rusty mortar shells and grenades labelled ”inert”.

US Lt Gen James Conway said the battle could be ”costly” if marines launched a new assault to uproot rebels from Fallujah, saying foreign fighters in the city had been reinforcing their positions and had no interest in surrendering.

The warning came two days after city leaders called on militants to hand over their heavy weapons in return for a US pledge to hold back on plans to storm Fallujah and allow the return of families that fled the city.

Now marines have halted the return of families because of the failure to disarm and the desire to have fewer civilians in the city if fighting resumes. More than a third of Fallujah’s 200,000 people fled to Baghdad and elsewhere during the fighting that began on April 5.

Yesterday, marines launched a major assault on the village of Karma, 10 miles north east of Fallujah, in a second attempt to put down guerrillas there. ”The enemy is taking casualties. We are not,” US Major General James Mattis said.

A battle in the village last week killed 100 fighters, according to US commanders. The two days of fighting in palm groves and over canals was so intense that wounded marines were sent out to fight.

In Baghdad, masked gunmen shot dead a South African security contractor working for the US-led occupation administration and severely wounded his translator yesterday. The shooting took place near northern Baghdad’s Sunni Muslim neighbourhood of Azamiyah, where gunmen have been active.

The upswing in violence has made April the bloodiest month for the American-led military since the invasion of Iraq. At least 100 soldiers and five American civilian contractors have been killed.

Dozens of foreigners have been abducted in a wave of kidnappings, with about 15 still captive.

New figures for the Iraqi casualty toll from this month’s fighting emerged yesterday, with the health minister saying 576 Iraqi fighters and civilians died in fighting since April 1 – sharply lower than earlier estimates.

A spokesman for British forces responsible for the southern Iraqi city of Basra lowered the reported death toll to 50 from a series of suicide bombings that targeted police stations there on Wednesday.

It was still too early to say who was behind the Basra attacks, Capt Hisham Halawi said. “We can’t discount al-Qaida. We can’t discount former regime loyalists,” he said.

Basra is overwhelmingly Shiite, and the last major suicide attack also targeted Shiites: a series of suicide bombers who struck holy shrines in Karbala and Baghdad on March 2. At least 181 people were killed.

US officials blamed the Karbala and Baghdad bombings – and other suicide bombings that have killed civilians – on foreign Islamic militants. They say a Jordanian al-Qaida-linked militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is leading a campaign of terror attacks against Shiites aimed at sparking a Shiite-Sunni civil war.