Violence in Iraq spreads to Baghdad as ground fire downs US attack helicopter

Gunmen down a US attack helicopter during fighting in western Baghdad yesterday, and the fate of its two-member crew was unknown. Insurgents and Marines called a ceasefire in the besieged city of Fallujah, though the fragile peace was shaken by a gun battle that wounded two Americans.

A pall of black smoke rose on Baghdad's western edge where a military spokesman said the AH-64 Apache helicopter was downed by ground fire in the morning. More helicopters circled overhead, while US troops closed off the main highway -- a key supply route into the capital.

"The condition of the [Apache's] crew is unknown," the spokesman said.

Heavy was heard and tanks and Humvees moved into the area, near the suburb of Abu Ghraib, where masked gunmen have wreaked havoc for the past three days, attacking fuel convoys and blowing up tanker trucks. Insurgents kidnapped an American civilian and killed a US soldier in the area on Friday.

The captors of the American hostage -- Thomas Hammil, a Mississippi native who works for a US contractor in Iraq -- threatened to kill and burn him unless US troops ended their assault on Fallujah by 6am yesterday. The deadline passed with no word on Hammil's fate.

Video aired on Arabic television yesterday showed the bodies of two dead Westerners -- apparently a pair of Americans seen by APTN cameramen on Friday being dragged out of a car on the Abu Ghraib highway, in a different incident from Hammil's kidnapping.

The cameramen fled the scene on Friday and the fate of the two men was unknown. But one of the bodies in yesterday's footage resembled one of the Americans taken out of the car.

The new footage showed the bodies surrounded by gunmen, who are heard on the tape saying the two are American intelligence officers.

One the bodies lay sprawled on the pavement, his face bloodied and his right leg drenched in blood.

The other body had been rolled face down, his shirt lifted to reveal a bullet hole in his back. Both wore dark t-shirts and khaki pants often worn by private contractors.

Meanwhile, Fallujah -- 60km west of Baghdad -- saw occasional sniper fire, but was still the quietest it has been all week after Sunni insurgents and Marines agreed to a ceasefire starting early yesterday and due to last until the evening amid talks between Iraqi officials on how to end the violence.

Hundreds US reinforcements moved in place on the city edge, joining 1,200 Marines and nearly 900 Iraqi security forces already involved in the fighting. And Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt warned that an all-out assault could resume if talks don't produce results.

The most serious break in yesterday's peace came when a sniper opened fire on a US patrol, wounding two Marines, commanders said. In the ensuing gun battle, at least one insurgent was killed. After the firefight, the city was largely quiet again.

"They are not playing by the rules, sir," Marine Captain Jason Smith radioed to his commander after taking fire in another incident in which the troops did not fire back.

US have been instructed not to launch offensive attacks on the rebels, said Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne, commander of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, which is deployed in the city's south.

A guerrilla commander in Fallujah's al-Jolan neighborhood told Al-Jazeera television that his fighters would abide by the truce.

"I have ordered my fighters to adhere to the ceasefire," said the commander, identifying himself only by the nom de guerre Abu Muadh. "But I warn everyone: If the enemy breaks the ceasefire, we will respond."

He added that the truce was due to last until 10pm, but that talks were ongoing in an attempt to extend it.

Yesterday was the first time that gunmen have said they were joining the halt in offensive operations that Marines have largely stuck to unilaterally since noon on Friday.

US called the halt at the request of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, where many members have been angered by bloodshed from the Fallujah campaign launched on April 5.

Council were holding a second day of negotiations with city representatives yesterday in an attempt to win the handover of Iraqis who killed and mutilated four American civilians on March 31 and of other militants.

"Were we not at this point observing [the halt] it could well have been that we would have had the entire the city by this point," Kimmitt said on Saturday.

He said fighters must "lay down their arms" and renounce their membership in extremist groups to fully end the insurgency that has recently made Fallujah its stronghold.

About third of the city's population of 200,000 fled the city on Friday and Saturday, streaming out in cars, though Marines turned back any military-age men trying to leave, Byrne said. During the lull, Marines distributed food to beleaguered residents near the area held by US troops.

"Families are holed up in houses. They have been told to stay inside. But they are running out of water and food. We are trying to get rations to them," said Marine Captain Jason Smith, 30, from Baton Rogue, Louisiana.

The week of fighting has been hard for Fallujah residents, with heavy battles involving tanks, AC-130 warplanes and helicopter gunships taking place around mosques and in residential neighborhoods.

Hospital said on Wed-nesday that more than 280 people have been killed, but no updated figures have been obtained since and many bodies have been buried at the city's main soccer field without even being taken to the hospital. At least five Marines have died in the fighting. Kimmett said 60 insurgents had been captured, including five foreign Arabs.

In southern Iraq, some 1.5 million Shiite pilgrims marked one of their holiest religious days, al-Arbaeen, in the city of Karbala, where hundreds of Shiite militiamen -- but no police -- patrolled the street preparing for a possible US assault against rebellious followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

US have suggested they will move against al-Sadr, whose militia has control of Karbala and two other cities, after the al-Arbaeen ceremonies, which mark the end of a 40-day mourning period for a 7th-century martyred Shiite saint.

In fighting across the country over the past week -- including in Fallujah and in the uprising by al-Sadr's Shiite militia in the south -- 47 American soldiers and more than 550 Iraqis have been killed. At least 649 US soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in March, 2003.

In other violence:

-- Gunmen ambushed Iraqi police before dawn yesterday in the northern city of Kirkuk, sparking a battle joined by US troops. Four attackers were killed, said Iraqi Colonel Sarhad Qadir.

-- Insurgents attacked two Iraqi police patrols in Mosul on Saturday in fights that killed two Iraqi police, a gunman and two passers-by, according to the hospital.