Insurgents infiltrating Fallujah in bid to disrupt elections

FALLUJAH, Iraq — Insurgents who escaped the Fallujah offensive are mounting daily attacks against U.S. Marines and Iraqi troops in hopes of disrupting nationwide elections set for Jan. 30, Marine officers said Tuesday.

"Insurgents will attempt to regain influence in Fallujah," said Lt. Col. Dan Wilson of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. "Some of them are infiltrating back in small numbers."

Wilson said that as civilians return to Fallujah, the former insurgent stronghold overrun by U.S. and Iraqi troops this month, the guerrilla fighters will try to "establish psychological dominance" over the population.

"The insurgents' ultimate goal is to create an environment to disrupt the election process, to pull Sunni Arabs away from elections," he said.

On Monday, one Marine was killed and three were wounded in an attack from a house in Fallujah that the military thought had been cleared of insurgents.

"It's still a very dangerous environment," Wilson said of this city 40 miles west of Baghdad. "Just when you think you have an area cleared, someone comes out of a tunnel, a spider hole and starts shooting."

U.S. and Iraqi troops launched an assault Nov. 8 to retake Fallujah, which fell under the rule of radical Muslim clerics and their fighters after Marines lifted a three-week siege of the city in April.

The U.S. military considers the battle for Fallujah a success. But Marines continue to fight sporadic gunbattles with insurgents as they clear the streets, homes and buildings. More than 350 weapons caches have been found.

"It's a dense city, easy to conceal in and move about," Wilson said. "They move sometimes from buildings with ladders across rooftops."

"We are seeing tunnel and sewage system out into the river that the insurgents are using as a rat line, from those pipes along the river to come back into the city," Wilson added.

He said it was impossible for the Marines to "maintain an air-tight cordon" around Fallujah and that there were "a lot of places to come back in."