100 Iraqis Killed in Wave of Attacks

Local leaders imposed a 9 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew, and the city television station warned residents to stay indoors for the "general good," Reuters reported.

U.S. Marines, meanwhile, clashed for several hours with gunmen from Fallujah, the restive city about 35 miles west of Baghdad that is home to various Muslim militias and, U.S. officials charge, a band of foreign Arabs drawn to Iraq to fight American forces out of sympathy with bin Laden and Zarqawi.

Maj. Gen. Zibar Zobaie, a former Iraqi army officer who speaks for the Fallujah Brigade, said the fighting began when a convoy from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was attacked by gunmen two miles east of the city. The gunmen were not from Fallujah but launched their attack from the city, said Zobaie, whose brigade is supposed to ensure security in Fallujah under an agreement with Marine forces.

Marines responded to the attack with snipers, helicopter gunships, artillery and armored vehicles, knocking down houses and killing and wounding civilians, Zobaie complained. As a result, Fallujah residents fired back, he said. A Marine AH-1H Cobra helicopter gunship, apparently hit by gunfire, was forced to crash-land, but its crew walked away unhurt, a Marine spokesman said.

"These were not fighters," Zobaie said on al-Arabiya satellite television. "These were Fallujans. Fallujans, when they come under attack, they defend their city, their women and their children."

In a statement to the al-Jazeera satellite television channel, Fallujah militia leaders threatened to set Iraq's oil pipelines and wells ablaze if the Marines continued firing on Fallujah. By mid-afternoon, however, a truce was worked out under which the Marines would cease firing and the Fallujah Brigade would guarantee that Fallujah's gunmen and militias would also stop firing and stay in the city.

The Health Ministry initially said hospital reports indicated nine Iraqis were killed and 37 were wounded in Anbar province, which includes Fallujah. The ministry later reported 20 killed in the province's capital, Ramadi, but did not specify a casualty count in Fallujah.

Insurgents in Ramadi attacked a police station at dawn, seizing control and gunning down seven policemen and seven civilians before planting explosives and blowing up the station, police told reporters. A bomb also exploded at another police station in Ramadi, but no one was reported killed.

In Mahaweel, near Hilla about 60 miles south of Baghdad, insurgents fired mortars at a police checkpoint, killing one Iraqi officer.

A man wearing the uniform of a police lieutenant carried a briefcase toward a joint U.S.-Iraqi checkpoint in southern Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, then went up in a tremendous explosion that killed him and four Iraqi policemen, bystanders and police recounted. The passenger cabin of a small pickup truck was reduced to scrap by the blast, but its load of fresh green beans was only slightly charred.

"This was a most cowardly attack, coming this way to kill the National Guardsmen," said Lt. Walid Ali, a 26-year-old guardsman who was directing traffic at the scene.

No U.S. casualties were listed, but reporters saw several U.S. soldiers tending to a comrade lying in the street nearby shortly after the explosion.

At about the same time, militiamen wielding automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers attacked four police stations around the capital. The U.S. military said all were driven back by return fire from the police with assistance from U.S. troops.

Correspondent Scott Wilson in Baqubah and special correspondent Khalid Saffar contributed to this report.