U.S. forces free Iraqi police chief in Falluja
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-19 14:53

U.S. forces freed the police chief of Iraq's rebel-held city of Falluja on Tuesday, along with two other police officers, their relatives said.

The police chief, Sabar al-Janabi, and his colleagues had been detained on Friday with the city's chief negotiator, Khaled al-Jumaili, who was released early on Monday.

The U.S. military gave no reason for the arrests and never confirmed it was holding the four men.

They were seized as they were moving their families away from Falluja for safety after a wave of U.S. air strikes aimed at disrupting the network of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which the U.S. military says operates from the city.

Townspeople called off a demonstration set for Tuesday to demand the policemen's release. Police in Falluja do not answer to the U.S.-backed interim government in Baghdad.

The government has threatened to attack Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, unless it surrenders Zarqawi's group.

Jumaili, who had been leading a delegation in peace talks with Baghdad, said after his release that such demands were like those made by Washington, before the war, for Saddam Hussein to give up weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.

The government is determined to win back insurgent-held areas so that all Iraqis can vote in elections in January.

Falluja, long the most volatile bastion of Sunni Muslim insurgency in Iraq, has been effectively in rebel hands since a U.S. offensive in April failed to root out guerrillas.