A U.S. AC-130 gunship raked Iraqi insurgents Friday night after hundreds of women and children fled the besieged city Fallujah during a U.S.-declared pause in the marine offensive.

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In Fallujah, marines halted their assault on insurgents to allow U.S.-picked Iraqi leaders - angry at the United States over the bloodshed from five days of heavy fighting - to hold talks with city leaders about how to reduce the violence.

Throughout the afternoon, fighting was reduced to sporadic gunfire. But when night fell, heavy explosions resumed as an AC-130 gunship strafed targets and soldiers and insurgents engaged in a mortar battle.

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Many families, emerging from their homes for the first time in days, buried slain relatives in the city football stadium.

A stream of hundreds of cars carrying women, children and elderly headed out of the city after Marines announced they would be allowed to leave. Families pleaded to be allowed to take out men, and when Marines refused, some entire families turned back.

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The Governing Council early Saturday issued a statement demanding an end to military action and "collective punishment" - a reference to the Fallujah siege.

Abdul-Karim Mahoud al-Mohammedawi, a Shiite on the Governing Council, announced he was suspending his council seat until "the bleeding stops in all Iraq." He also met Friday with al-Sadr, whom U.S. commanders have threatened to capture.

A Sunni council member, Ghazi al-Yawer, said he would quit if the Fallujah talks fell through.

One of the strongest pro-U.S. voices on the council, also a Sunni, Adnan Pachachi, denounced the U.S. siege.

"It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal," Mr. Pachachi told Al-Arabiya TV.

Anger grew Friday among U.S.-picked Iraqi leaders over the Marines' bloody siege of Fallujah, with one member of the Governing Council suspending his membership and another threatening to quit.

Friday's halt in the assault had been requested by the council to allow for talks on reducing the violence, a U.S. spokesman said.

Several of the council's 25 members spoke out against what they called the "mass punishment" of Fallujah's people in the siege, launched early Monday by U.S. forces to uproot Sunni insurgents in the city.

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One of the strongest pro-U.S. voices on the council, Adnan Pachachi, denounced the U.S. siege, launched after Sunni insurgents killed four U.S. contract workers and a mob dragged their burned and mutilated bodies through the streets and hung two of them from a bridge.

"These (U.S.) operations were a mass punishment for the people of Fallujah," Pachachi told Al-Arabiya TV. "It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal."

Added al-Yawer: "We all agree that those who did that (killed the four Americans) were criminals who deserve to be arrested. But the result was the mass punishment of a city. ... And that we refuse."

Faced with mounting popular anger over heavy civilian casualties in Fallujah west of Baghdad, US civil administrator Paul Bremer announced Friday a unilateral suspension of the six-day-old offensive against Sunni Muslim rebels to allow for the delivery of food and medical supplies to residents.

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Fallujah residents had earlier started to flee the besieged city, an AFP correspondent witnessed.

Men, women and children were fleeing on foot through backstreets and paths that cut through fields, and were being allowed to pass by US marines.

Fallujah mayor Saad Abdullah al-Rawi called on the world to "pressure the Americans to stop the massacres in the city and allow residents to bury their dead and treat the many wounded."

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And in Baghdad, Bremer named Governing Council member Samir Sumaydah as the new interim interior minister, replacing Nuri Badran who resigned Thursday after the US overseer expressed dissatisfaction with the performance of his ministry, particularly the police.

  Falluja is being mortared and bombed by F-16 fighter planes, helicopters dropping cluster bombs and rocket-propelled grenades.

  Ambulances are being shot at by snipers. Medical aid and supplies have been stopped by US Occupation Forces. Aid workers delivering supplies have had to take secondary roads into the city; once they arrived, they found themselves under fire from US snipers. No humanitarian corridor has been put in place.

  A cease-fire was announced and people began trying flee, but US troops resumed their attacks. Many people remain trapped inside the city, and refugees trying to escape from Falluja to Baghdad are being prevented from reaching their destination by US military. They form a column that extends over 10 kilometers of highway.

  The thousands of families who remain trapped in Falluja are running out of basic necessities like food and potable water. Hospitals and medical staff are overwhelmed, and are asking desperately for blood, oxygen and antiseptics.

Minutes after Bremer's announcement, US forces carried out a fresh offensive on Falluja bombing the town from the air. Scores of residents were injured in the attack, reported our correspondent.

"There is no brokered agreement for a ceasefire in Falluja," Kimmitt told AFP. "There is no agreement between the rebels and the coalition forces."

IGC statement

Earlier, the Iraqi Governing Council member Mohsin Abd al-Hameed in a statement on behalf of his Iraqi Islamic party to Aljazeera said military action in Falluja would end for a period of 24 hours.

Upon commitment to a ceasefire by the occupation forces and Iraqi resistance fighters the ceasefire would continue, the statement said.

The Islamic party political bureau would send a delegation to hold talks with prominent figures in the town, the statement said.

Aljazeera, meanwhile, has learnt that during negotiations to end the military offensive, US forces imposed many conditions including getting the Aljazeera crew out of the town.

Evacuation

At dawn on Friday, US forces asked the residents to evacuate the town, reported our correspondent.

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Men, women and children were fleeing on foot through backstreets and paths that cut through fields, carrying small bags, food and medicines.

Most were seen heading toward the nearby village of Naimiyah, south of Fallujah, which has been under effective US siege since Monday.

Bodies were left to rot in the streets as people cowered indoors.

"F-16s are bombarding and cars are transporting the wounded. In the hospitals, there are bodies and remains everywhere. There is a state of intense anger." He adds that "the situation is very tragic in the besieged city of Al-Fallujah. Bodies of women are ripped apart from the shelling of planes, there is intense anger everywhere, the planes are shelling, smoke is rising from everywhere, and the planes are flying despite the cease-fire announcement. The situation is extremely difficult."

In another 10-minute report, carried at 1033 GMT, Mansur describes scores of cars that left the city since the morning, and says "there has been a sort of migration. Families have packed their belongings with the aim of leaving the city. Now, they are returning again." He says that "the US forces have closed off the roads and are not allowing people who wanted to leave the city from leaving." While reporting, the sound of bombardment is heard and Mansur says "a helicopter is bombarding a residential neighborhood in Al-Jawlan."

Concluding, Mansur interviews the director of a hospital in Al-Fallujah who says that "the US forces have returned ambulances carrying food and supplies as they were trying to cross the bridge to reach the hospital."

The Iraqi Islamic Party was leading mediations to evacuate casualties, bring in supplies and end hostilities in the town west of Baghdad.

The people of Fallujah carried their dead to the city's soccer stadium and buried them under the field on Friday, unable to get to cemeteries because of a U.S. siege of the city.

As the struggle for Fallujah entered a fifth day, hundreds of women, children and the elderly streamed out of the city. Marines ordered Iraqi men of "military age" to stay behind, sometimes turning back entire families if they refused to be separated.

"A lot of the women were crying," said Lance Cpl. Robert Harriot, 22, of Eldred, N.Y. "There was one car with two women and a man. I told them that he couldn't leave. They tried to plead with me. But I told them no, so they turned around."

Occupation forces are only advancing slowly in Falluja

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After more than three days of ferocious fighting, the marines had managed to move just two kilometres (a little over a mile) through the industrial zone, which they had thought was largely abandoned.

Fallujah - Fallujah's residents buried their dead in a soccer stadium and hundreds of women, children and elderly left besieged Fallujah on Friday as US marines paused in their assault on Sunni insurgents who have made the city their stronghold.

US forces called a halt to offensive operations at noon to allow a delegation from the city to meet with US commanders, let humanitarian aid into the city and give city residents a chance to tend to their dead.

But after 90 minutes, marine commanders gave their troops permission to resume offensive operations after forces on the ground complained of being attacked, Major Pete Farnun said. And after nightfall, thunderous explosions again rocked the city.

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Thousands of Iraqis - Sunnis and Shiites, in a sign of unity - travelled to the city from Baghdad on Thursday, bringing food and medicine and waving banners praising the "jihad," or holy war, by Fallujah's fighters.

Marines allowed the aid to enter the city.

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Overnight, troops used loud speakers to tell people that old men, women and children would be allowed to leave, but not "military-age men."

A long line of cars snaked its way on Friday afternoon through parts of the city as residents queued to be checked by Marines before being allowed out.

Hundreds of vehicles lined up at one checkpoint, but many men trying to leave with their families were told they could not go, and whole families turned back.

Soldiers said that hundreds of vehicles, in lines that stretched for kilometres, did leave the city.

"A lot of the women were crying," said Lance Corporal Robert Harriot, 22, of Eldred, New York.

"There was one car with two women and a man. I told them that he couldn't leave. They tried to plead with me. But I told them no, so they turned around."

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In a disturbing development for the troops, marines discovered homemade suicide belts and said they had killed two men wearing them. Suicide tactics had not been seen before in the Sunni city.

In fighting on Thursday, US forces called in one of their most devastating weapons - an AC-130 gunship that laid down heavy fire - the second time in the battle.

So when President Bush made his notorious trip to the Abraham Lincoln to announce the end of all "major military operations"--beneath a banner claiming "Mission Accomplished"--and when attacks against US troops continued to rise, it was time to rewrite the chapter on post-war Iraq. "Foreign fighters" were now in the battle, according to the US Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld. The US media went along with this nonsense, even though not a single al-Qa'ida operative has been arrested in Iraq and of the 8,500 "security detainees" in American hands, only 150 appear to be from outside Iraq. Just 2 per cent.

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If the occupation authorities had bothered to study the results of a conference on Iraq held by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies in Beirut recently, they might be forced to acknowledge what they cannot admit: that their opponents are Iraqis and that this is an Iraqi insurgency.

An Iraqi academic, Sulieman Jumeili, who lives in the city of Fallujah, told how he discovered that 80 per cent of all rebels killed were Iraqi Islamist activists. Only 13 per cent of the dead men were primarily nationalists and only 2 per cent had been Baathists.

Residents started to flee the besieged Iraqi city of Fallujah on Friday on the fifth day of ferocious street fighting between United States forces and Sunni Muslim insurgents in the western town, an AFP correspondent witnessed.

Men, women and children were fleeing on foot through backstreets and paths that cut through fields, carrying small bags, food and medicines.

Most were seen heading toward the nearby village of Naimiyah, south of Fallujah, which has been under effective US siege since Monday.