FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. warplanes pounded Fallujah with 500-pound laser-guided bombs yesterday, and Marines battled insurgents near a train station and in neighborhoods that had seemed to be quieting. American forces decided to delay potentially dangerous patrols into the besieged city.
The violence, carried on live television with images of fiery destruction, came as the United States was under increasing international pressure to prevent a revival of the bloodshed seen in the city west of Baghdad during the first two weeks of April.
Commanders in Iraq said the Marines were responding to guerrilla attacks and that the military was sticking to a more than two-week-old halt in offensive operations to allow negotiations.
Guerrilla attacks broke out in at least three Fallujah neighborhoods that had been relatively quiet during the past three days. And the U.S. response intensified: When a Marine was wounded, warplanes dropped 10 laser-guided bombs -most of them 500-pound bombs but at least one 1,000 pound - on buildings that were the source of guerrilla fire, Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne said.
At least twice, AC-130 gunships opened up on guerrilla positions with their heavy cannons.
Guerrillas fired on a train station just outside the city's northern edge, prompting a battle in the Golan neighborhood, an insurgent bastion. Fighting also erupted in the northeast, southeast and center of the city.
The extent of the battle was difficult to gauge. Witnesses reported at least 25 buildings wrecked by fighting. Hospitals only counted 10 wounded Iraqis, but ambulances could not reach areas where fighting was going on, and residents reported large numbers of dead and wounded.
Late in the day, Byrne announced that Marine patrols into the city due to start today had been delayed a day.
The United States decided over the weekend to send in the patrols of Marines and Iraqi security forces to establish a semblance of control over the city.
Several families were seen fleeing the city yesterday during the battles, the latest to puncture a tattered cease-fire in Fallujah.
Across Iraq, attacks are down, compared with the first two weeks of April, as U.S. officials try to negotiate solutions for Fallujah and with militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the south.
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