Hundreds of civilians began returning to this battle-scarred city yesterday, a day after the US army cautiously lifted a two-week siege, as the coalition in Iraq suffered a new blow with the decision of Honduras to pull out its troops.
US marines checked identity papers and screened civilians with metal detectors at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Fallujah, 50km west of Baghdad, while about 100 cars and trucks formed a long line on the main road leading to the borders of Jordan and Syria.
The marines were assisted by Iraqi police and members of the paramilitary Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, who began carrying out joint patrols with US soldiers under the terms of a ceasefire with insurgents still holed up in the city.
Faud Rawi, a member of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party who helped mediate the deal, said he was "optimistic about the willingness of the fighters to respect the ceasefire" which, he said, "averts the destruction of the city."
But Dan Senor, spokesman for the US-led force, warned that "major hostilities" could resume at short notice if a "full and unbroken" ceasefire failed to hold.
The ceasefire included an amnesty for fighters handing in heavy weapons, unfettered access to the city's main hospital and burial of the dead.
Hospital sources estimated that more than 600 Iraqis, half of them women, children and elderly people, died in Fallujah in the bloodiest fighting since the US-led invasion of their country in March last year. The US military says it is impossible to verify the figure.
The siege began after four US civilians working for a security firm were ambushed and killed on March 31 and two of their mutilated bodies strung up in the city, which lies in the so-called "Sunni triangle," the heartland of support for Iraq's ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, local police will be responsible for probing the killings.
Previously, the US-led coalition administering Iraq had demanded that those responsible be turned over to the marines.
As tensions began to subside in Fallujah, the coalition suffered a new blow with the decision of Honduras, announced by President Ricardo Maduro late Monday, to pull out of the occupying force.
The withdrawal should not have much material impact, since Honduras contributed 368 troops to the 155,000-strong contingent.
But it comes hot on the heels of a decision by Spain's newly elected Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to withdraw his country's 1,432 troops from Iraq immediately instead of waiting until June 30 as he had previously indicated.
In a diplomatically worded but stinging rebuke, the White House said US President George W. Bush had reminded Zapatero in a telephone call of "the importance of carefully considering future actions to avoid giving false comfort to terrorists or enemies of freedom in Iraq."
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