Fearing Big Battle, Residents Flee

Most of Samarra's 300,000 or so residents are Sunni Muslim, but the city also is home to two important Shiite shrines and has a small minority of Kurds. Residents said relations with U.S. forces began to deteriorate last winter after American troops fired on a wedding party that was celebrating in a traditional way by shooting weapons into the air. The wedding party, members of one of the larger extended clans in the city, vowed revenge.

They have been joined by religious militants intent on waging a holy war, by former members of Iraq's disbanded Republican Guard who still sometimes wear their uniforms in the city, and an assortment of other tribes and groups willing to join the fight for sentiment or for money. Some of the fighters came from Fallujah, Mohammed and other residents said, and some came from outside the country.

"Samarra used to drive Saddam crazy," Batiste said. "There are seven tribes. There are two or three cells," he said, and one or two of them are composed of Hussein loyalists. "One is a terrorist cell. There's a criminal family that's always been in Samarra. And there is a lack of competent leadership, partly because there's so many tribes vying."

The groups are threatening and killing anyone who they believe cooperates with U.S. authorities or even with the Iraqi government, the residents said.

"They just go into a house and kill the owner and burn it," Hassan said. Some of the groups also have been enforcing a strict religious code, closing liquor stores and cafes, insisting that women wear head coverings and berating young men who wear bluejeans.

"I was walking down the street when one of them demanded of me, 'Why are you wearing bluejeans?' " said a 17-year-old, who did not want to give his name. "They put a gun to my head. They said, 'Why is your hair so long?' Even before I went back to the house to change, I went to get a haircut."

For several weeks, Samarra residents have been slipping out of town. Many have houses or extended families in Baghdad, and have moved in. Some travel back and forth, depending on their reading of the dangers on a particular day.

A military source in Baghdad cited reports that said as many as 40 percent of the residents have left Samarra. Some residents of the city said the figure was higher.

"The businesses are closed. No one is in the streets," Hassan said. "Any stranger who comes in is looted and robbed. If you go in now, it seems like a city of ghosts."