Marines Plan Handoff To Militia in Fallujah

The Fallujah Protection Army will be subordinate to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and report directly to Conway, Byrne said.

Byrne and other Marine officers did not reveal the full name of the Iraqi force's overall commander or the individuals who agreed to the deal with Conway. Marine officers met with representatives of the new force on Thursday at a municipal building on Fallujah's outskirts.

"We are doing this because we love our country and we want these thugs out of our country," said Mohammed Faur, a former colonel in the Iraqi Intelligence Service who is serving as a liaison between the militia and the Marines.

Faur said most members of the new force would be from Fallujah. "It's about time for them to take responsibility," he said. "It's an Iraqi problem. The Iraqis are getting angrier. People are upset that Syrians and foreigners are causing trouble here."

Some American officials familiar with efforts to pacify Fallujah said they were concerned about the background of the participants and questioned whether they would be screened for past human rights abuses and other crimes. Marine officers said they did not know the details of how the force would be assembled. One American with knowledge of the plan said procedures for vetting participants had not been detailed by Conway.

A Marine officer familiar with the arrangement acknowledged that some former insurgents may be part of the force, creating the potential situation of U.S. troops having to work with people who have very recently been shooting at them.

L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq, announced last week that elements of the Iraqi army, which was hastily dissolved after U.S.-led forces took control of the country, would be rehabilitated and returned to service. That decision, combined with the fresh approach in Fallujah, could help regain some support from Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority, which ran the country under Hussein. U.S. officials consider Sunni support crucial to the successful handover of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30.

The deal also could exploit any divisions among Sunni insurgents in the city, which appear to be growing, according to Marine officers.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, the military announced the deaths of 10 U.S. soldiers, eight of them in a single car-bomb explosion at about 11:30 a.m. Thursday in Mahmudiyah, a southern suburb of the capital. At least four other soldiers were wounded in that blast, U.S. military officials said.

A military statement said the casualties in Mahmudiyah were part of a 1st Armored Division task force that was "working to make the roads south of Baghdad safe for the citizens and those traveling to the holy sites in the area." While the soldiers were working on one of the roads, the statement said, a driver in a station wagon approached and detonated the car bomb.

Earlier in the day, a rocket-propelled grenade attack on an Army patrol in eastern Baghdad killed one soldier from the 1st Cavalry Division. A few hours later, a soldier from the 1st Infantry Division died when a roadside bomb exploded as a military convoy passed near Baqubah, a Sunni-dominated city 30 miles northeast of Baghdad.

The attacks brought the number of U.S. soldiers killed in combat this month to 122, making it the deadliest since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1, 2003.

While U.S. officials weighed how to tame Fallujah and the Shiite holy city of Najaf, insurgents maintained the tempo of their attacks on U.S. troops outside those areas. The violence came as an influential Shiite cleric in the city of Karbala called on the United States to hand over full sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30, not the limited version that has been discussed in recent weeks.

"We have recently seen the occupation authority's policy going in curves, without purpose or direction," Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mudaressi, a scholar who has cast himself as an Islamic reformer, said at a news conference. "We must tell the coalition authority that force cannot fix things, that we need more wisdom, understanding and dialogue to avert escalating violence."

Despite a drumbeat of attacks across the country, eliminating resistance activity in Fallujah has emerged as a top priority for U.S. commanders and civilian officials. Marines entered the city in force on April 5, five days after the American security contractors were killed.

Correspondents Sewell Chan and Scott Wilson in Baghdad, staff writer Bradley Graham in Washington and special correspondent Naseer Nouri in Mahmudiyah contributed to this report.