FALLUJAH, Iraq — Guerrillas shouting "God is great" launched a bold daylight assault on an Iraqi police station and security compound west of Baghdad on Saturday, freeing prisoners and sparking a gunbattle that killed 21 people and wounded 33, police and hospital officials said.
The same security compound was attacked two days earlier by gunmen just as the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, was visiting the site in Fallujah. Abizaid escaped that attack unharmed.
One shop owner across the street from the security compound said he and his neighbors had been told by guerrillas not to open that morning because an attack was imminent.
Around 25 attackers, some of them masked, faced little resistance as they surrounded the police station and stormed in, going from room to room throwing hand grenades and firing heavy machine guns, survivors said. Few police, most with only small weapons, were present at the time.
"I only had a pistol with me," said Kamel Allawi, a police lieutenant. "Right away I fell on the ground and blood was gushing out of my left leg."
The attackers freed 75 prisoners held at the station, killing the guards and shooting open the cell doors, police Lt. Col. Jalal Sabri said. The prisoners were criminals — most arrested for murder or theft — and none of them were suspected of involvement in the anti-U.S. insurgency, Sabri said.
The gunmen, shouting Islamic slogans "God is great" and "There is no god but Allah," also attacked the nearby, heavily barricaded compound of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps that Abizaid visited Thursday. Iraqi security forces battled with the attackers for a half hour in the streets, taking cover behind concrete blocks amid a hail of gunfire.
The brazen, bloody battle — on the heels of the Abizaid attack — raised questions about the preparedness of some Iraqi police and defense units to take on security duties as the U.S. administration wants. After the Thursday attack, Abizaid said of the Iraqi civil defense unit in Fallujah: "Obviously they are not fully trained. They're not ready."
The U.S.-led coalition intends to hand sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30 and rely more on Iraqis to fight the persistent insurgency, blamed on backers of Saddam Hussein and foreign Islamic militants.
But American plans for the transfer of power have been shaken by criticism from the powerful Shiite Muslim clergy and growing opposition on the U.S.-picked Governing Council. A U.N. special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, who was brought in to try to resolve the dispute, called on Friday for major changes in the U.S. formula for picking a new government.
In Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad, no American forces could be seen in Saturday's battle. The U.S. command has said American troops could be quickly dispatched to trouble spots to help Iraqi forces as America hands over security to the Iraqis.
Lt. Col. Sabri said 17 people were killed — almost all police — along with four attackers, two of whom he said carried a Lebanese passports. He said he believed all the attackers were non-Iraqis.
"I suspect they were Arabs or Syrians or belonged to al-Qaida. They want to create instability and chaos," he said.
Two of the dead taken to Fallujah General Hospital appeared to be attackers. They were dressed in black T-shirts and baggy pants with hand grenades in the pockets, said Mohammed Ibrahim, a hospital administrator. One had belt of machine gun ammunition.
Of the 33 wounded, 25 were policemen, said Adel Ali, the hospital's deputy director.
Qais Jameel, a wounded policeman, said some of the attackers spoke in a foreign language. "It sounded like gibberish to me. It wasn't Arabic," he said from his hospital bed, the sheets soaked in his blood.
"If the situation continues this way, I might leave the police force. We joined the police to provide security, but no one wants security, they (insurgents and criminals) want to chaos to continue," said his colleague, Ahmad Saad, who was unhurt in the attack and crouched by the bed comforting Jameel.
"Our problem is that we don't have any kind of heavy weapons, no effective weapons," just automatic rifles, said Sabri, speaking at the police station in a room with bloodstained carpets.
In early February, pamphlets signed by insurgent groups were posted in Fallujah warning Iraqis not to cooperate with U.S. forces and threatening "harsh consequences." Among the groups that signed the leaflets was Muhammad's Army, which U.S. officials say appears to be an umbrella group for former Iraqi intelligence agents, army and security officials and Baath Party members.
Also Saturday, demonstrations broke out in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah and the Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, where hundreds of angry Iraqis demonstrated against U.S. military raids and searches of their homes.
Carrying placards that read "Today Demonstrations, Tomorrow Explosions," protesters gathered near a giant American-run prison — built by Saddam Hussein — and demanded the release of thousands of Iraqi prisoners.
"This demonstration is a reaction against the behavior of the coalition forces against our citizens and against the attacks against our houses and the capture of our men and our children," one man shouted during an interview with Associated Press Television News. "They are attacking in the middle of the night against innocent people."
In Kurdish-majority Sulaimaniyah, thousands of protesters clamored for an independent Kurdish state that includes the three autonomous Kurdish provinces as well as disputed parts of northern Iraq containing a large Arab population.
In Suwayrah, 30 miles southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi police shot and wounded three armed men in a pickup truck, and after searching the truck, discovered it was wired with a bomb on Friday, said the provincial police chief Brig. Gen. Hassan Khatan.
U.S. plans to hand over power to the Iraqis on June 30 have been shaken, with Iraq's most influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, demanding elections before the handover date.
U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi left Iraq on Friday after a week-long mission to determine if elections were possible. His spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, said he doubted a national ballot was feasible by the target date.
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