part of a U.S.-led force of at least 10,000 -- said earlier that guerrillas were battling hard in Falluja's northern Jolan district. "They are putting up a strong fight and I saw many of them on the street I was on," Captain Robert Bodisch told Reuters. Many families fled the city of 300,000 to escape air raids before the offensive. The U.S. military said about 150,000 residents had taken refuge outside Falluja. Residents said they had no power and used kerosene lamps at night. They kept to ground floors for safety. Telephones were erratic. Food shops had been closed for six days. Iraqi troops brought nine handcuffed prisoners to a railway station on the northern edge of the Jolan area where U.S. and Iraqi forces are based. They said two of them were Egyptians and one was Syrian. The rest were Iraqis. The interim Iraqi government and its U.S. backers say foreign Muslim militants led by al-Zarqawi are holed up in Falluja along with Iraqi rebels. A suspected car bomb outside an Iraqi National Guard base near Kirkuk killed three people and wounded two. In Samarra, a senior local government official was assassinated, police said. --More 2123 Local Time 1823 GMT
