BAGHDAD — U.S. and Iraqi representatives agreed on a preliminary plan for a full cease-fire in the embattled city of Fallouja, even as insurgent attacks on Marine positions continued late into Monday evening.
Marines besieging the city agreed not to resume their offensive into the heart of the town if "all persons" turned in their rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, missiles and other heavy weapons. Residents could keep their AK-47 assault rifles for personal protection, the Marines said.
The joint communique from U.S. and Iraqi leaders who have been negotiating the fate of Fallouja also modified the terms of the U.S.-imposed curfew, allowing the sick and wounded to get to hospitals and pledging to facilitate the burial of the dead, among other steps.
As of today, 50 civilian families a day are to be allowed to enter the encircled city, which experienced a mass exodus during the initial Marine strike to counter the insurgency.
U.S. officials stressed that Marines could quickly launch an assault deep into the city's center if insurgents did not disarm. "There is also a very clear understanding ... that should this agreement not go through, Marine forces are more than prepared to carry through with military operations," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S.-led coalition's chief military spokesman, said at a Baghdad news briefing.
Volleys of rockets and mortar rounds were fired at Marine positions late Monday, though there was no immediate report of casualties.
In other action, representatives of the U.S.-funded television station Al Iraqiya said a correspondent and his driver were shot and killed by U.S. troops near the northern city of Samarra. A military spokesman said the incident was being investigated. The Army last month acknowledged killing two employees of the Al Arabiya satellite channel in Baghdad in what the Army called an accidental shooting.
Meanwhile, the president of Honduras announced that he would withdraw his nation's 370 troops from Iraq "in the shortest possible time."
"I have told the coalition countries that the troops are going to return from Iraq," President Ricardo Maduro said in a speech on national TV and radio. "I have ordered ... the carrying out of the decision taken in the shortest possible time."
Honduran lawmakers had expressed concern for the troops' safety because of the recent wave of violence. Soldiers from Honduras have been serving with a Spanish-led humanitarian brigade in central Iraq since last summer. They had been scheduled to leave at the end of June.
