US warplanes pounded Falluja yesterday and American troops reinforced positions around the city in a battle targeting foreign militants led by America’s top enemy in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said last week Falluja must hand over Zarqawi's group or face military action.

Hospital officials reported casualties from the air strikes but said heavy fighting prevented ambulances from reaching them. Residents said explosions and heavy gunfire accompanied clashes on the eastern edge of the city, which pitted US tanks against fighters with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

US armoured personnel carriers and Humvee vehicles gathered on a highway on Falluja’s outskirts, witnesses said.

Air strikes on Saturday night killed three people and wounded five, hospital sources said. Residents said dozens of houses had been damaged in eastern and western districts.

A US military statement said the warplanes targeted a checkpoint manned by Zarqawi fighters in the city’s Jolan district after raids on Thursday hit two other checkpoints. It said the latest raid was part of an intensive campaign against militants said to be using the Sunni Muslim bastion west of Baghdad as a base to plan suicide bombings and kidnappings.

Residents say civilians are the main casualties of frequent US air strikes aimed at smashing Zarqawi's suspected network.

US ground forces have thrown what the military calls a “dynamic cordon” around the city. Residents said a new US checkpoint at Falluja’s northern entrance was preventing people from entering or leaving the city of 300,000.

Falluja has effectively been in insurgent hands since Washington called off a US assault on the city in April after fierce fighting and a high civilian death toll.

<B>Reasserting authorit</B>

Allawi’s government has sworn to seize back Falluja and other insurgent-held cities to enable all Iraqis to vote in elections due in January. But any new offensive could throw the country into fresh turmoil and cast a cloud over the polls.

In Baghdad, the capital's Sadr City slums came under mortar fire yesterday at a stadium where weapons collected from Shi’ite militiamen have been stored, Reuters witnesses said. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Shi’ite militiamen have surrendered few serviceable weapons under a week-long cash-for-guns scheme meant to halt fighting with US forces in Sadr City, a US officer said yesterday, the last day of the handover.

“Our expectations had been that thousands of weapons would be handed in”, said Captain Brian O'Malley of the First Cavalry Division in Sadr City east. “We haven't seen that many.”

He told Reuters many of the surrendered weapons were old and broken. It did not appear that militiamen loyal to anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had completely disarmed, he added.

But Aqil al-Saffar, a senior Iraqi security official, said a large quantity of light, medium and heavy weapons had been collected in the past week and stored at the Defence Ministry. He made no comment on the quality of the weapons turned in, but said they would be distributed to Iraqi security forces. The US military has accused Zarqawi of carrying out bombings aimed at fuelling sectarian strife and civil war.

The Jordanian militant's Tawhid and Jihad group claimed responsibility for Thursday’s suicide bombings that killed up to four Americans in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, seat of the government and home to the US and British embassies.

Some Iraqis say Washington exaggerates the threat from Zarqawi to disguise the strength of the homegrown insurgency.

The US military denied reports by Kuwait’s official news agency KUNA that Zarqawi and nine other militants had been captured by US forces during raids in Falluja on Friday.

Two US soldiers were killed and two wounded when two US helicopters crashed in southwest Baghdad late on Saturday. The military said the cause of the crash was being investigated.

A roadside bomb wounded a British civilian and his Iraqi driver in the southern city of Basra yesterday, police said. The unidentified Briton works for a landmine clearance agency.

Iraqi National Guards raided buildings in the northern city of Kirkuk overnight and seized three people suspected of planning suicide attacks, along with caches of weapons and explosives, a guard officer, Major-General Anwar Amin, said.

BAGHDAD

<B>Mortars fired at hotel</B>

■ wo mortars were fired at a hotel used by journalists and foreign contractors in Baghdad yesterday. There were no initial reports of any injuries or damage. One mortar landed in a street close to the Hamra hotel, a fortified complex popular with Westerners, and another hit nearby a couple of minutes later.

“It doesn’t appear that anyone was hurt, but we are checking,” an Iraqi who lives nearby said. Residents of the hotel said they did not think serious damage had been caused.

Insurgents frequently attack hotels used by foreign contractors and journalists in Baghdad, particularly the Sheraton and Palestine, which are ringed by high concrete walls and are guarded by US troops.

At least two rockets hit the Sheraton earlier this month, damaging several rooms and setting fire to trees at the front entrance. No one was seriously hurt.

<B>Fadel al-Badran</B>