FALLUJAH, Iraq -- U.S. Marine officers said yesterday that U.S. and Iraqi troops sweeping Fallujah have uncovered enough weapons to fuel a nationwide rebellion and that clearing the former insurgent bastion of arms is holding up the return of civilians.

Most of Fallujah's estimated 250,000 civilians left the central Iraq city ahead of the devastating Nov. 8 assault and "it will be probably several more weeks" before significant numbers of them can return, said Lt. Col. Dan Wilson of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

"We are looking at a very dense city, of some 50,000 structures -- each and every one of them has a potential (weapons) cache hidden inside," he told reporters.

Searching out and disposing of weapons is "very tedious hard work for the Marines," he said. "People still have to be patient, they need to have a safe and secure environment before they can go back."

Without providing details, Wilson called the amount of arms uncovered in Fallujah "stunning."

"The amount of weapons was in no way just to protect a city," said Maj. Jim West, a Marine intelligence officer. "There was enough to mount an insurgency across the country."

Yesterday Dr. Rafie al-Issawi, director of the Fallujah General Hospital, issued an appeal on Al-Jazeera television for doctors who fled the city to report to the Health Ministry the following day "to join us and help Fallujah residents."

Al-Issawi said he issued the appeal following a meeting with U.S. and Iraqi officials who assured him they want to restore medical services in the city as soon as possible.

The bodies of five more slain Iraqis were found on the outskirts of Mosul yesterday morning, bringing to 20 the number of soldiers slain over the last week as part of a campaign against the Iraqi forces who joined American soldiers in suppressing a revolt in this northern city.

Three of the bodies yesterday were lying in an open field on the far western fringe of the city, in an area rarely patrolled by U.S. soldiers. The other two were found on the edge of a major highway.

"They're using the killing of the Iraqi regular army and national guard as a threat to the people of Mosul," said Staff Sgt. Christopher Schaefer, a military intelligence officer responsible for the western half of Mosul.

Insurgents also tried to assassinate two top officials in Mosul yesterday, Deputy Governor Khasro Gouran and Maj. Gen. Rashid Flaih, head of a special Iraqi commando force sent from Baghdad to help restore order after the Nov. 11 insurgency rippled through the entire city.

Almost none of the city's 10,000 police officers has returned to work since insurgents burned several stations on the first day of widespread fighting in Mosul, according to U.S. commanders here. Yesterday, American soldiers and Iraqi national guardsmen cleaned the ashes from three of the most seriously damaged police buildings.

In the headquarters, the new chief was nowhere to be found. An American soldier at the station said the police chief had stopped by the building briefly a few days earlier, but had not served a full day in his office since being appointed last week. His predecessor was arrested two days ago for apparent ties to the insurgency. At the Mosul police operations center, two plainclothes officers manned a command system that they said was usually bustling.

The assailants who targeted Flaih fired on the Iraqi general's convoy from a black Mercedes sedan and a truck of the same model used by the Iraqi police.

Iraqi and American soldiers killed three attackers in the sedan, just blocks from the local government headquarters. Two of the windows were shattered by bullets, and the car seats were stained with blood and flesh. A bulletproof vest identical to those issued the Iraqi police lay on the back seat, coated with a thick film of blood.

The attackers in the truck escaped.

"The police are traitors. We will never be able to count on them," said Ahmed Mohammed, an Iraqi national guardsmen at the police station in the New Mosul neighborhood.

But during the fighting, nearly half of Mosul's National Guard also deserted, and now many of those who remain work in terror. They cover their faces with balaclavas, refuse to reveal their last names, and switch buses on circuitous routes home so their neighbors will not learn where they work.

Lt. Col. Erik Kurilla, commander of the 1st Battalion of the 24th Infantry Regiment, part of Fort Lewis-based Task Force Olympia, said that insurgents had shifted tactics after 40 of them were killed in direct clashes around Nov. 11.

"They realized they cannot go toe to toe with us," Kurilla said. "So they're going after the Iraqi security forces. They know if they kill a lot of them, people will choose not to be part of those organizations."

Many of the Iraqi soldiers killed in Mosul have been Kurds.

The two major Kurdish political parties have sent their own peshmerga militia into Mosul to protect the Kurdish minority, stoking fears of wider ethnic clashes between Kurds and Arabs.

Yesterday insurgents attacked a busload of Kurdish fighters traveling to Mosul, killing three and wounding nine, according to officials in the city of Erbil, where the wounded were taken.

Meanwhile, a delegation from the international Red Cross visited former leader Saddam Hussein yesterday to check on his condition in detention, a spokesman said.

Seattle Post Intelligencer