Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News

BAGHDAD, 11 April 2004 — Baghdad saw street fighting yesterday as teenage gunmen shot at US troops from alleys in northwest Baghdad’s Sunni Muslim Adhimiya district. Reporters saw an Iraqi shot dead in his car as he tried to flee the area.

In Fallujah, the US-led coalition and fighters agreed to a 12-hour cease-fire starting today at 6 a.m. to pave the way for US Marines to leave the town.

Iraqi kidnappers said in a tape aired on Al-Jazeera they would kill and maime a US hostage they had seized unless American forces got out of Fallujah.

But three Japanese hostages who are among several foreigners kidnapped or killed in the last few days could be freed today.

Their kidnappers had threatened to kill them unless Japan pulls its troops out of Iraq by today. But Al Jazeera said it received a new fax from the group that kidnapped the Japanese, announcing they would be freed. “They will release them in 24 hours in response to a call from the Muslim Clerics Association,” the Arabic TV channel said.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has rejected pulling out Japanese troops, despite protests in Tokyo urging him to do so.

The Pentagon said two US soldiers and an unknown number of civilian contractors were missing after an attack on a military fuel convoy in Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad on Friday.

Two German Embassy security guards went missing a few days ago. Berlin officials said they feared the pair had been killed.

President George W. Bush said US-led forces would defeat groups wreaking havoc in Iraq and reaffirmed that an interim Iraqi government would take back sovereignty on June 30. Hundreds of Iraqis and 52 US or allied troops have been killed in this week’s battles with Sunni and Shiite militias.

A US airman was killed and two were wounded yesterday in a mortar attack on an airbase at Balad, north of Baghdad, the military said yesterday.

The death brought to 456 the number of US troops killed in action since the war began.

In Fallujah, the truce offer came after Iraqi politicians decried US “collective punishment” meted out to local people.

The aim was to allow peace talks between Iraqi officials and fighters, said US Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt. Fighting had continued despite US Marines holding back on offensive operations since Friday.

A delegation representing Iraq’s US-backed Governing Council and Sunni leaders managed to visit Fallujah for talks with religious and anti-US leaders. Council member Mahmoud Othman said the delegation was also asking Fallujah leaders to hand over those who attacked four US private security guards 10 days ago and then burned and dragged their bodies through the streets.

The truce “will pave the way for the gradual pullout of US Marine troops from Fallujah,” Hatem Al-Husseini, a senior member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, said.

US Marines launched a retaliatory crackdown in Fallujah on Monday. An assessment by five international non-governmental organizations said 470 people had been killed in the fighting and 1,200 wounded, including 243 women and 200 children.

Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr also remained defiant. “The occupation’s promises are evil. They must not be heeded,” Sadr said in a statement issued by his office in Najaf yesterday.

Meanwhile the US Army said it killed 12 fighters in northern Iraq, destroying their truck with a missile, and killed three others after clashes in Mosul. At least three Iraqi police were killed in violence there, police said. A US tank was set on fire west of Baghdad and locals said a 10-year-old boy had hit it with a rocket-propelled grenade.

— Additional input from agencies