Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News

BAGHDAD, 1 May 2004 — US Marines started withdrawing yesterday and Iraqi security forces took over positions from them in Fallujah while a US official said an agreement had been reached to allow an Iraqi security force to patrol the city and end the monthlong siege.

Skirmishes continued in Fallujah, however, and a suicide car bombing killed two Marines and wounded six near their camp in the city, the military said. It gave no details of the attack.

Members of the 1,100-member force moved into the former Marine positions in southeastern Fallujah and raised the Iraqi flag. Military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the Marines were “repositioning” their forces and would continue to maintain a strong presence in and around Fallujah.

Negotiations were also taking place in the southern city of Najaf, where tribal leaders and police discussed a proposal to end a standoff between soldiers and militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr. In a Friday sermon, Sadr remained defiant, saying he rejected “any appeasement with the occupation.”

Meanwhile, an Iraqi police colonel, Ahmad Al-Khazraji, was shot dead Thursday night in downtown Baghdad, the US command said yesterday. The body of a Baghdad area council member was found hung with a sign on his chest that said “Al-Mahdi Army business,” a reference to Sadr’s militia.

“It appears he had been beaten, tortured and hung,” Kimmitt said.

Kimmitt told reporters that the new Iraqi force will be “completely integrated” with Marines. He insisted that the Marines were not “withdrawing” from the city.

Yesterday, convoys of troops and equipment could be seen heading out of the area.

“Initially it appears that the transition to the Fallujah Protective Army is working. It’s a delicate situation. The Fallujah Protective Army is the Iraqi solution we’ve all been looking for in this area,” Marine Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne said.

The commander of the new force is Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh, a veteran of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards. He shook hands with Marine commanders at a post on the southeastern entry to the city and was accorded a hero’s welcome by the residents.

Kimmitt said he had no information on Saleh’s background, but that the commander had been vetted by the Marines who had full confidence in him. A former general in the Iraqi Army, Mohammed Al-Askari, said Saleh served in the Republican Guards in the 1980s. He later commanded an Iraqi Army division and headed the army’s infantry forces.

A senior defense official at the Pentagon said the Iraqi soldiers’ initial mission is to man checkpoints around the city. Marines will remain on or near the city’s perimeter and plan at a later stage to conduct their own patrols inside the city, the official said on condition of anonymity.

The Iraqi force will be all volunteer and will consist of former Iraqi soldiers from the Fallujah area who are vetted by US authorities, the official said.

Marines went into Fallujah to find those responsible for the March 31 killing and mutilation of four American contract workers, whose bodies were burned and dragged through the streets.

However, the United States has been under intense pressure from the United Nations, its international partners and its Iraqi allies to end the bloodshed, in which hundreds of Iraqi civilians are believed to have died.