AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, the War and Peace report. I'm Amy Goodman. Also at democracynow.org. We were talking about Najaf. Now to Fallujah. Rahul Mahajan has just come out of Fallujah, one of the few westerners who has been there. The situation: eight Iraqi, one U.S. Soldier killed in clashes in Fallujah. The marines called in air strikes destroying a minaret, which they said insurgents had reportedly been firing from. Can you talk about the situation in Fallujah?

RAHUL MAHAJAN: Well, obviously it's very tense. All of the signs point to a renewed offensive. The US assaulted the city with pretty much everything but the kitchen sink: 2,000 bombs from f-16's, ac-130's, specter gun ships, super cobra helicopter tanks. They were not able to take it in the first offensive. So they decided to try to win a military victory by negotiation instead, by getting the rebels essentially to disarm after which, presumably, the united states would go into the city and round them all up and put -- throw them into the prison and throw away the key as they have done with so many thousands of other Iraqis. Obviously, that wasn't going to work. The rebels were not going to disarm. It's just a matter of time. They're trying to get that military victory by negotiation. They're talking about joint patrols with Iraqi security forces which essentially means using Iraqi security forces as human shields. It's a common practice when they do have joint patrols. But that's just a way of seeing whether they can force a capitulation or provoke another escalation and go in and finish off the job. It's likely to be extremely bloody, if they do.

As in many conflicts, there were unanswered questions. One headstone read simply "unknown," but it named the place where the person had been killed, Hay Askari, a district in this town of about 300,000 where some of the fighting has taken place since the American siege started early this month.

And there were also the ongoing sounds of battle, belying the shaky truce.

"Hear that?" said a man as the rattle of machine-gun fire and thump of explosions echoed in the distance. He was milling around the cemetery with some other residents, as well as a few fighters, their faces shrouded with Arabic scarves and their hands clutching automatic weapons. They all came to an abrupt standstill to listen to the sudden sounds of renewed combat.

...

Judging by the littered cemetery grounds, bodies had been brought here from hospitals or ambulance medics. Rubber surgical gloves and masks had been tossed amid the graves. Boxes of incense lay spent and discarded, and dried palm fronds were stuck into the dirt of the mounded plots.

...

"There are still a lot of bodies out there," said Hamza. "But we can't get them because of the fighting."

The role of the snipers here has been a stealthy one amid a cease-fire that U.S. officials say has been repeatedly broken by Arab insurgents. The snipers were deployed in early April, as guerrilla ambushes claimed more than 50 Marine lives in the bloodiest fighting since U.S. troops entered Iraq last year. Not since the Vietnam War have American forces deployed so many sharpshooters.

Day and night, the sniper teams stalk their prey, well beyond the bases from which Marines control about a quarter of the city. From rooftops, in fields and around alleyways, the sharpshooters are an offensive force - at a time when most Marines are under orders to fire only when attacked.

A sniper team consists of four men, each of whom carries a sniper rifle, an M16 and a pistol, as well as extra ammo and a host of other equipment. They set up sniper nests from which they track suspected enemy fighters with special long-range scopes, thermal imaging devices and computerized equipment. If the team agrees a person has "hostile intent" - such as carrying a weapon or rocket-propelled grenade - a designated sharpshooter cuts him down with a special bolt-action rifle, killing him with a single shot up to 1,000 yards away.

At Falluja, the fighting around the mosque underscored the odds against a lasting breakthrough to avert a military showdown. The agreement on Sunday to have joint American and Iraqi patrols through the city came as a huge relief to many Iraqis, especially in Baghdad, where there were fears that a resumed Marine offensive could set off a wave of anti-American violence.

But the Monday events revived the widespread conviction that both sides have made Falluja a watershed of the wider Iraqi struggle, and that neither the American forces nor the insurgents will back down. If the battle at the mosque suggested that the insurgents were still a long way from submitting, it also showed the marines' willingness to use some of their heaviest weapons against them.

General Kimmitt said the marines had reacted to the first volleys from the mosque, in the northwestern district of Jolan, by advancing under fire, then pausing to allow the insurgents a chance to surrender. When nobody emerged, the general said, marines went in and found the mosque deserted, "with the exception of a significant amount of expended shell casings in the minaret."

He said the Americans had then pulled back, only to take renewed fire from the mosque.