SAMARRA, Iraq, Oct 1 (AFP) - The rebel-held city of Samarra, stormed Friday by US and Iraqi forces, stands at the heart of the Sunni Arab belt north and west of Baghdad where many towns are under the sway of the insurgency.
A joint US-Iraqi offensive launched overnight appeared poised to regain control of a city that had been a no-go zone for US and Iraqi forces since June.
The US military said it had killed 94 insurgents in the fighting and taken control of police and government buildings.
The massive armoured incursion, involving thousands of troops, came a day after Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh vowed that his US-backed government would retake all rebel-held enclaves by next month, in time to organize nationwide elections promised for January.
With a population of 250,000 people, Samarra is a key city on the main highway from Baghdad to northern Iraq.
It is home to a major Shiite shrine but its residents are overwhelming Sunni and have proved a fertile recruiting ground for the insurgency dogging US-led troops.
Saddam`s still fugitive number two, Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, had two homes on the city`s outskirts that were bombed by the US military last year and Samarra has proved a tougher nut for the US-led coalition crack than the two men`s hometown of Tikrit further north.
Municipal and tribal leaders charge that repeated US-led counter-insurgency operations in the city since last autumn have only strengthened support for the rebels among a population that fared relatively well under Saddam Hussein`s Sunni-dominated regime.
The alleged drowning of a young man by US troops early this year is just one of a litany of grievances voiced by residents. The incident is under investigation by the military.
"Yes, the harsh tactics fanned the insurgency," Naji Khalid al-Samarrai, head of a prominent Samarra political association, told AFP by telephone from his Baghdad home.
"But I think Samarra`s historic and religious significance has made it a magnet for resistance in the region."
Arrests and raids on suspected insurgent hideouts and homes by US troops have been an almost daily occurrence in nearby towns like Balad and Dhuluiya, where the head of the local national guard unit resigned in protest Thursday.
Samarrai said he was taken aback by the sudden US-led offensive on the city as he believed he and other Samarra officials were close to brokering a deal between the insurgents and the government that would have allowed Iraqi forces to return to the city without recourse to violence.
"What we are seeing now is an effort to subdue Samarra by force and to sideline certain political forces to serve the agenda of the United States and that of its allied government," he said.
"I do not think force is the answer."
As late as Thursday the provincial governor had said he expected the negotations with insurgent leaders to bear fruit.
"An agreement will be announced soon ... A previous signed plan with the coalition will be ready to work again, and I will tell you as soon as it`s finished," said Hamed Hamud al-Qaissy, who is based in Tikrit, the provincial capital.
US commanders say they believe the insurgency in Samarra has centred on a hard core of former regime agents, bolstered by Islamic militants, some of them from beyond Iraq`s borders.
A recent report by the Iraqi government said a 50-strong cell of the feared Unity and Holy War group of US arch foe Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi was operating in the city.
Followers of the Jordanian-born militant, who has a 25-million-dollar US bounty on his head, have carried out a string of suicide bombings and executions of foreign hostages this year.
But in a sign of the difficulties the Iraqi government and its US backers face in stamping out the insurgency in time for January polls, US military sources admitted that the Samarra operation might merely have displaced the hard core rebels elsewhere.
Intelligence reports suggested that some of the foreign fighters who had found refuge in the city might have slipped east to Dhuluiya, the sources said.