FALLUJAH, Iraq — A general in Saddam Hussein’s former army entered Fallujah to a hero’s welcome yesterday as U.S. Marines left their main foothold in the flashpoint city after a bloody monthlong siege.
As Marines began rolling out of the town in tanks and trucks, Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh was met by a cheering and flag-waving crowd.
Gen. Saleh, chosen by the Americans to head a new security force in Fallujah, toured its war-torn streets, which in the past three weeks have witnessed the worst fighting in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March last year.
“We will work together for the sake of Fallujah,” said Gen. Saleh, dressed in his combat fatigues and a black beret, as about 400 people reached out to touch him in the town’s Hadra al-Mohammadiyah mosque.
Locals described Gen. Saleh as a respected town elder who had been stationed in the main northern city of Mosul before the coalition toppled Saddam Hussein a year ago.
The Marines’ 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment, accompanied by tanks, left frontline bases in abandoned factories and garages in Fallujah’s southern industrial zone, taking down barbed wire and berms.
Gen. Saleh showed up in town with 200 followers before heading into closed-door talks with the commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, Lt. Gen. James Conway, at Camp Fallujah, a few miles outside town.
“They look like they are ready to do business,” Gen. Conway’s chief of staff, Col. John C. Coleman, told reporters after the talks.
Col. Coleman also confirmed that a first 600-to-1,000-strong battalion of the newly created Fallujah Brigade had taken over Marine positions in the city.
“We had a transition of forces; as their forces came in line, they supplanted ours,” Col. Coleman said.
He said he was optimistic about the end of the siege.
“Day by day they’ll judge us and we’ll judge them. … We’re working ourselves out of a job.”
The Marines said they would stay inside the city until the battalion, which is mainly locally recruited from former members of Saddam’s army, was judged capable of standing alone.
The Marines warned that they would not budge on their demands that the city be cleared of insurgents, the basis for their April 5 assault.
When the Fallujah Brigade’s 1st Battalion has restored calm, it will work alongside police in “identifying the murderers and mutilators of the four American contractors on March 31 and the criminals responsible for the February 14 attack on the Fallujah police station,” the Marines said in a statement.
On March 31, four American contractors were murdered and their bodies mutilated in downtown Fallujah, prompting the Marine siege of the city.
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