It is difficult to gauge the support of the people of Falluja for men like him but after three weeks of fighting many complain privately they are tired of the Mujahideen. But hatred of the Americans seems universal.

'The Americans are killing people who had nothing to do with the death of those four soldiers,' says Mustafa referring again to the US security contractors killed and dismembered at the beginning of April. The deaths were the ostensible reason for the attack on a city which US army spokesman General Mark Kimmit famously described as 'not getting it'.

In fact, it was the US army that never really 'got' Falluja, militarily or culturally. For over eight months, it has been beyond their control, caught up in a cycle of violence that began on 28 April last year, when 17 Iraqis were killed by US soldiers during a protest. Casualties mounted after September, rising dramatically each time a new US army unit arrived. By the time the Americans decided to assert themselves, local tribes, religious leaders and, perhaps, foreign fighters, were well supplied and waiting. Now the Americans have left a traumatised, angry city.

There are no victories in Falluja. The Marines' initial incursion into its industrial zone at the start of the fighting deprived the resistance of weapon stocks, which were soon replenished. After more than 20 years of Saddam's wars, Iraqis know how to fight, especially in Falluja, birthplace of many of Iraq's army officers.

Everybody we talked to in Falluja had stories about snipers. In some neighbourhoods, stepping outside meant certain death. Residents said Americans used the minarets towering over Falluja, known as 'the City of Mosques'. The US army accused the resistance of doing the same.

Like the graveyard, the hospital reveals a lot about what has happened. At the beginning, the main hospital across the river was cut off and doctors moved into three small clinics. During the initial fighting, most wounded civilians came in with what Dr Mohammed Samarae describes as 'multiple blast wounds - lost limbs, abdomens blown open,' the result of shelling when much of the population were trapped in their houses.

'After that, almost all the casualties were head and chest wounds from snipers,' said Samarae. 'Ninety per cent of the injured were civilians - children, old people, women - the fighters take their medicine and leave. The characteristics of the wounds suggest they are American-inflicted. We have had a lot of experience of American weapons in the past year.'

Retreat is not a word usually found in the US Marine Corps' lexicon. If anything, these battle-hardened troops prefer the concept of no surrender or camouflage setbacks with the notion that they are simply fighting in another direction. But by any military standards the decision to pull out of the beleaguered city of Fallujah is a capitulation of sorts and one which the "leathernecks" will hardly relish.

On the tactical level, it showed that the marines were incapable of forcing their will on the city and restoring order � the key objective � and that the task is best handled by a 1000-strong Sunni militia operating under the guise of the newly-formed Fallujah Protective Force.

In the wider scale of the operation, it is also a slap in the face for the official US policy, encouraged by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, that previous members of Iraq's armed forces should be excluded from holding any position of power in Iraq.

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Their commander, Lieutenant-General James Conway, promised that the perpetrators would be captured and brought to justice, a cease-fire was imposed and heavy weapons were confiscated. Yet, despite the deployment of armoured vehicles, Cobra attack helicopters and AC-130 gunships, the city remained in the hands of the Sunni gunmen who seemed impervious to the firepower ranged against them.

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Specially trained in low intensity warfare, particularly the need to deal sympathetically with the local population by winning their hearts and minds, the marines were supposed to represent the caring face of the US occupation in the run-up to the June 30 transfer of power. US envoy Paul Bremer had set great store on the force's capacity to turn things round on the ground, and it is one of the many ironies of the current operations that Conway's marines found themselves caught up in a battle, which one veteran claimed was "as bad as anything we experienced in Lebanon in the 1980s".

There is one silver lining. Although the appointment of Saleh and the creation of his force is a step backwards, in that it reverses a jealously guarded policy, there are hopes it could mark the way forward. A State Department source said that while Iraqis respect displays of strength, it was also clear that they had reached the end of their tether in Fallujah and were no longer prepared to accept the presence of US forces.

Thousands of refugees from Fallujah streamed into their city yesterday after a four-week siege by U.S. troops. In nearly empty streets, residents met to embrace fellow survivors, mourn the damage to homes and mosques, and weep for their dead.

People here proclaimed a victory over American forces that they said has restored some dignity and honor to a nation that has lost both under U.S. rule.

"The Americans say only a few criminals and foreigners are fighting them," said Yasser, a guerrilla in his 20s. "But Fallujah has showed that the ordinary residents are fighting and refusing to be occupied by force."

"There was no precision in their attacks," said Dr. Talab Janabi, director of a prominent private clinic whose facade was scarred by small-arms fire. "The Americans made no differentiation in this battle between any kind of people."

Janabi and other doctors said several ambulances, white with red markings, were shot up. They blamed U.S. troops, saying guerrillas would have had no reason to destroy the vehicles that they depended on for medical help for themselves or their families.

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Whatever the intent of U.S. commanders to spare Fallujah civilians, Janabi and others said that is not what happened.

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Chiad was described by many as a hero of the battle, organizing makeshift clinics across the city after access to his hospital was cut off behind the Marines' front lines. He criticized both Marines and guerrillas. "All the parties ... should know they can have no more military conflict in cities like this without hurting mostly civilians. Anyone who is educated can see " he said.

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In a middle-class neighborhood, a guerrilla fighter readily invited an American reporter for lunch. He and his wife are both high school teachers, and to all evidence they fit none of the labels (foreign, Islamic extremist, Baath Party hard-liner, terrorist) that U.S. officials have applied to the resistance here. With U.S. forces compiling lists of Fallujah's guerrillas for arrest, Newsday is withholding the couple's names.

"We could accept it when the American army came to get Saddam out" last year, said the guerrilla as he poured water into a basin for his guests to wash their hands. "But then they put their army into our neighborhoods and even our houses, telling us where to go and when. They want to control us too tightly. ... Iraqis - especially Fallujans - will never accept this."

"When those four Americans were killed here, many people in Fallujah disapproved," his wife said. "In that case the Americans were victims. But the American army reacted blindly and wildly in this attack on our city, and they made enemies of all the people of Fallujah."

As American gunships fired into Falluja one night last week, shaking the floor beneath our feet, this pretty 12-year-old boy described how he had tricked and killed an American sniper in the battle for the city.

"I kept on firing until I saw smoke coming out of his body," said Saad, his voice a piping treble.

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The incident of the sniper has become an instant local legend. It began when the boy noticed a unit of Iraqi fighters pinned down in the north of the city. Hiding his AK-47 behind his back, he defied orders to keep away and walked towards the building the sniper was shooting from.

"I knew the soldier would think I was only a child and would not fire at me," he said.

He was right. As he approached the American position, the sniper turned away. The boy promptly knelt in the road, lifted his Kalashnikov and killed him.

The incident has given Saad an authority beyond his years. "I advise Bush to withdraw his troops from Falluja and Iraq if he does not want our country to be their graveyard," he pronounced, raising himself to his full 4ft.

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When I had arrived in Falluja on Tuesday I found that what had once been a bustling city of 300,000 lay still and silent but for the hum of drones and warplanes. Neighbourhood after neighbourhood seemed empty. The busy markets, street vendors, beggars, black-clad women and playing children had disappeared.

Those who remained were fighters. They called themselves mujaheddin and came from all walks of life: a first-year medical student, a car mechanic, a pharmacist, a trader, a teacher and many sheikhs.

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We stopped at a makeshift first aid clinic in a mosque. In charge was Maki al-Nazzal, an English-speaking former employee of Intersos, an Italian agency. He spoke with bitterness of the women and children who had filled his ward and complained angrily about US tactics: "By killing women and children they are hardening the people of Falluja and turning them more against them (the Americans)." He said that despite the apparent emptiness of the city many families were trapped in their homes. After long negotiations with the Americans, he had won permission to send a doctor out to help with medicine and food.

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Soldiers stormed houses at night, searched unveiled women and humiliated men in front of their wives and children.

Thafer said all the tribal leaders and religious figures condemned the mutilation of the four Americans whose deaths triggered the fighting. Like other figures in the city, however, he did not condemn the actual killings. Many people I spoke to claimed the men had been mercenaries.

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I had my own brush with American air power while interviewing Saad, the boy sniper, with Ali Rifaat, the Sunday Times correspondent in Baghdad. His car came under fire 200 yards away, apparently from a gunship. The navy blue 1993 Buick Roadmaster was hit twice and burst into flames. Neither of us was hurt, but a local commander was hit by shrapnel.

Everyone raised a hand in greeting to the ICDC guards who waved us straight through a checkpoint. Everyone raised a hand also to the Mujahedin fighters in ones, twos and little clusters around the town, their faces still cloth covered, Kalashnikovs still at hand, walking in and out of houses, one holding up the Iraqi flag, one in a black balaclava guarding a corner.

They are waiting, Saad said. "They will shoot the Americans if they come back. We will not accept their patrols. We blame only the Americans for what happened. The fighting in Falluja was because they were shooting civilians. Let them have our oil, we don't care, but let us live in peace. This is only people from Falluja fighting, not foreigners, because of the tribes. If the Americans kill a father or a brother then the tribes want revenge, but we don't let strangers in."

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Their dad showed us the hole in the ground that they'd had to use as a well after the electricity was cut to the whole town, early on, as collective punishment.

In the old days, just the sight of his drab green uniform was enough to strike fear into dissident Iraqi hearts.

As a commander of Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard, Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh was part of the formidable army that put down insurrections. Now the ex-Baathist is back in uniform -- this time for the people who a year ago were his enemies.

In a remarkable case of poacher-turned-gamekeeper, Saleh has been handpicked by the U.S. military to lead a new 1,000-strong Iraqi force to quell the insurgency in the city of Fallujah.

As U.S. Marines rolled up their barbed-wire blockades of Fallujah on Saturday, Saleh's new forces fanned out and imposed a cordon around nearly the entire southern half of the city. The Marines were pulling back to set up a second cordon about 5 miles back.

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The decision by Marines in Fallujah to cede power to a former regime figure surprised officials in Washington and Baghdad. But according to Marine commanders on the ground, political niceties have been sacrificed to battlefield pragmatism.

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"The U.S. has slipped into the swamp in Iraq, and now they are trying to hang on any rope to get them out," said one former Iraqi army colonel who used to know Saleh. "They do not care whether he was in the Baath Party or not. All they are interested in is suppressing the militants and rebels. What message does this send out? That the Americans have no principles -- they just want to keep their own asses safe."

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Saleh faces one task that no amount of threatening or cajoling may be able to pull off. As part of their deal to withdraw from Fallujah, U.S. forces are insisting that local leaders hand over those responsible for killing and mutilating the four U.S. military contractors whose deaths sparked the beginning of the siege a month ago. So far, the locals are flatly opposed.