Insurgent Base Discovered in Fallujah

A Marine handcuffs an Iraqi in Fallujah, where the U.S. was battling insurgents in the city's south. (Thaier Al-sudani -- Reuters)

Iraqi security forces, acting as translators, identified letters written in black ink on white paper as correspondence between Zarqawi and his top aides. The letters reportedly contained requests for financing and weapons, Johnson said.

Soldiers hauled boxes filled with passports and identification cards out of the house. They also found bicycles and notes with instructions such as: "Go to the flour factory. There is something there for you."

In warehouses not far from the house, soldiers found a classroom with drawings of U.S. F-16 and F-18 fighter planes, a repair shop for anti-tank rounds and a factory for making car bombs where a Ford Explorer with a Texas registration sticker was parked. A garage with a roll-up door had been turned into a makeshift mosque.

Dead bodies were scattered among the rubble, and soldiers said they found no one alive.

A U.S. intelligence source said that while much of Zarqawi's organization was based in Fallujah, he apparently divided his time mainly between Baghdad and Ramadi. The source, a senior participant in the hunt for Zarqawi by U.S. and allied special forces and intelligence officers, spoke on condition of anonymity. The source said U.S. intelligence has been able to track Zarqawi occasionally, but never in time to move against him.

Sattler, the Marine commander, said the Fallujah offensive had "broken the back of the insurgency" in Iraq, disrupting rebel operations across the country.

"Each and every time we can force these individuals to go to new locations, expand their circle of friends -- if you want to call it that -- to include some that they don't know and they don't trust, they'll bring in rookies, more-junior people that will, in fact, make mistakes," he said. "This is going to make it very hard for them to operate."

But a veteran military analyst in Washington asserted that the United States arguably had suffered a political setback. "Fallujah has been a political victory for the insurgents," wrote Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It has further polarized the Arab Sunnis, weakened Sunni participation in the interim government, and raised more questions about the independence and legitimacy of" interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government.

Thaer Naqib, a government spokesman, acknowledged that the fighting in Fallujah has driven guerrillas elsewhere but insisted that their dispersal will aid U.S. and Iraqi efforts to subdue them ahead of nationwide elections planned for the end of January. "They have dispersed, but now that they have dispersed, we can finish them off as quickly as possible," he said at a news conference.

Naqib warned that Islamic clerics who incite violence would be seen as abetting terrorism. The statement echoed a similar vow by Allawi and followed a series of arrests of Muslim preachers in past weeks.

In particular, the government has targeted the Association of Muslim Scholars, which vocally supports the insurgency and has emerged as the most influential Sunni body. On Thursday, police also arrested Hashim Abu Raghif, the representative in Najaf for a militant Shiite Muslim faction loyal to the rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr, a spokesman for the group said.

In Baqubah, the U.S. military raided the office of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni group, according to the head of the office, Adnan Qaisi. This week, the U.S. military detained a high-ranking representative from the group's office in Baghdad.

A collection of 47 parties said it would boycott the election, citing the fighting in Fallujah and other cities. The group was dominated by Sunni factions, most prominently the Association of Muslim Scholars, but included a handful of Shiite groups.

"The battle of Fallujah has . . . has forced the parties to take a position," said Muthanna Dhari, the son of the association's leader. "The only way they can have elections is if the occupation forces announce the schedule of their withdrawal."

Correspondent Anthony Shadid in Baghdad and staff writers Barton Gellman in New York and Thomas E. Ricks in Washington contributed to this report.