FALLUJAH UPDATE - Seattle Post-Intelligencer: AP - Middle East

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: AP - Middle East:

"Iraqis line up in straggling columns, waiting to pass through barbed-wire checkpoints that ring this former insurgent stronghold left battered by intense fighting three months ago. Men stand in one, women and children in another. The few cars form a third.

They are returning to a virtually empty city where the 1st Marine Division's rumbling tanks and patrolling riflemen are out in force making sure the guerrillas don't come back.

American officers say only about a tenth of the 250,000 residents have returned since fleeing the weeklong battle in November that drove out insurgents who had controlled the predominantly Sunni Muslim city.
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Marines handed out military rations for weeks after the battle to help the few families in the city get by, but that stopped after the Jan. 30 national election. 'They have to get back on their own feet,' said 1st Lt. Sven Jensen, leading a patrol from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines."