U.S. Will Reinforce Troops in West Iraq

Residents say basic services have fallen, with electricity, water and schooling interrupted and the university closed for long periods. The imported Shiite police force, they say, has collapsed, and many doctors, professors and other professionals are fleeing.

"The city has gone back to the 14th century, if not further," said Akram Fadhil, a 40-year-old man with seven children and no job.

Rumors routinely circulate of a Fallujah-style clearing operation in Ramadi. Residents say they both hope for it and fear it. The November 2004 operation in Fallujah, a largely Sunni Arab city about 35 miles west of Baghdad, involved a major deployment of troops and sometimes intense fighting with insurgents.

"The city has become an unburnable hell," said Abdul Salam Ahmed al-Rawi, owner of a now-shuttered ice cream shop in Ramadi.

"We hope this will end soon, and that Americans will clean the city," Rawi said early last week. "But first they have to change the troops here now, and bring in more, better troops, just like a year and a half ago in Fallujah."

"For I expect if these troops were given the orders to launch a military campaign, many civilians will fall," Rawi said. "The Marines in Ramadi now are considering the whole situation as a matter of a challenge, or revenge, because of the daily strikes they get. It makes them put civilians and the al-Qaeda men all in one category."

Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks in Washington and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.