Marine, insurgent tactics evolve

The insurgent safe house in Fallujah looked like every other one on the block, except that it was carefully marked with two new bricks, hanging from cord on the outer wall.

Explosives experts had already been in the carport, and blown up several mortar tubes set up in the back of a truck - a mobile artillery unit favored by rebels.

But Tuesday 1st Sgt. Rodolfo Sarino wanted to take the counterinsurgency effort one step further, in keeping with the volumes of new information US troops are learning every day about the rebellion they are trying to crush.

He upended barrels full of drinking water, and used his knife to carve slits into plastic water jugs, draining them, too. Then the marine examined the large store of food adjacent to the kitchen: sacks of rice, bowls of potatoes, and onions.

And he lit a match.

Within minutes, the store was on fire, adding belching black smoke to Fallujah's acrid skyline - and depriving mobile bands of insurgents of at least one life-giving larder.

"That's how they move from place to place and survive," Sergeant Sarino said, as flames began licking up the food cache. "They go from house to house, and stockpile food and water wherever they can. You have to [burn it], because that's the only way to defeat them: Deny them food and water, and force them to come out."

Such tactics are paying off to a degree, in a guerrilla fight on an urban battlefield, where the learning curve for conventional US Marine and Army forces has been steep.

Hungry insurgents have been found among the dozens of men who visited food distribution sites tentatively opened by the Iraqi National Guard on Monday.

Those suspects have been questioned, and in one case, have led Americans to a safe house stacked with food, a suicide belt packed with explosives, dozens of electronic garage-door openers (used to set off command-controlled car bombs), and other hardware.

But the invasion of Fallujah - nerve center and symbol for Iraq's nationwide insurgency - enters its second week, US and Iraqi forces are learning more and more about each other.

Tactics learned here will almost certainly be used against insurgents elsewhere in Iraq, who have taken the Fallujah assault as their cue to attack in a string of cities across Iraq.

US troops Tuesday had to send a 1,200-strong force to retake control of the center of the northern city of Mosul. In Sunni strongholds, guerrillas overran nine police stations. In recent days, they have killed scores of people.

The US is trying to stamp out the insurgency in Sunni regions of Iraq ahead of elections scheduled for January. A Sunni politician who withdrew from Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's government to protest the Fallujah assault was arrested Tuesday in Baghdad by US forces, the Associated Press reported.

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