SAMARRA, Iraq, Oct 4 (AFP) - Iraqi men and women ventured out onto the streets of Samarra on Monday as they struggled to resume their lives after a weekend of death and destruction.
Repair workers with cranes fixed downed power lines and mosques announced by loudspeakers that it was safe to walk the streets and exit the city, after an estimated 5,000 US and Iraqi forces wrested control of the 250,000-community from insurgents on Friday.
The US military lifted a three-day closure of the Sunni Muslim city and power was partially restored, said Colonel Randy Dragon of the 1st Infantry Division.
Food was handed out at mosques amid concerns families' food supplies were running low in the aftermath of the US-Iraqi military campaign.
But even as the Iraqis walked around the city, they expressed a mixture of anger and fear against the backdrop of buildings scarred by bullets and reduced to rubble.
Iraqis remained convinced that bodies were buried in shallow graves in people's front yards and abandoned in buildings. And they worried US troops might shoot them.
Men and young boys strolled down the streets with white flags.
At the city's general hospital, doctors pleaded with Colonel Dragon to let them send out ambulances to pick up the dead and wounded.
They had gone out with US troops to do so Sunday when they had collected seven bodies, but they did not feel safe.
Dragon assured them they could move freely in the city and Salahuddin province's governor Hamad Hamoud quickly announced they would put ambulances in every neighborhood to whisk out any remaining dead and wounded.
The hospital was first to be shut down as the staff sanitized the building after a weekend that saw 50 corpses piled up rotting in the corridors. Most of Samarra's sick were to be taken to Tikrit as a temporary measure.
The governor told Dragon they needed to let in convoys of supplies to avoid food shortages and the colonel insisted trucks could come in freely now.
Checkpoints were in place around the city but anyone could enter after being searched, he said.
But few believed the Americans. Even the city's mayor, Tareq al-Samarrai, said, "No one can enter or exit."
Dragon said he such mistrust and skepticism was only to be expected.
At least 150 people died and scores were wounded in the two-day joint offensive against Samarra, a city north of Baghdad that had been in the grip of rebels since June.
"The operation with Iraqi forces has ended within 72 hours ... They have a little anxiety and it will take a while to overcome," he said.
While the Americans have 20 million dollars (16 million euros) to spend on Samarra, so far only two million dollars has been made immediately available.
US troops have been working to restore power to the city since Sunday after shutting down the power grid last Thursday on the eve of their operation.
Samarra's main water pumping plant started to run Monday, but the Americans said some parts of the city were still not receiving electricity due to damage during heavy fighting on Friday.
They were hoping for a full assessment of the power crisis by Tuesday.
"We don't know how many transformers were blown up, and lines downed," said Lieutenant Colonel Blair Schantz.
Looking to win over Samarra residents, Hamoud and Dragon toured the city, visiting among others a woman who gave birth this weekend in a neighborhood shot up with bullet holes.
The governor, dressed in a pressed brown suit with a lemon tie, started shoving her dinars when a crowd swarmed him. A man shouted in his face: "You're here today, but we won't see you a month from now. Where's the electricity?"
Hammoud bear-hugged the man and soothed him, telling him he understood Samarra's suffering.
They shouted back and forth, and Hamoud scrawled out a note for him on a piece of paper, with the promise of some sort of help to tide the man over through the hard times.
They quickly kissed on the cheek, while Hamoud's bodyguard discreetly watched, gripping a small revolver beneath his coat.
Hamoud smiled, pleased with his politicking and quipped about his efforts to woo the man over with same patronage style of the old regime: "It's just like Saddam Hussein."