Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which heads the Shiite coalition, said his group had won the vote. Although he did not give evidence for his claim, most observers expected the coalition, known as the United Iraqi Alliance, to dominate the poll. "The United Iraqi Alliance scored a sweeping victory," Hakim said. "We know that the majority of those who voted cast their vote for the alliance."

Vote totals were being checked, then added up by computer, after first tallies were completed by hand at polling stations nationwide. Busloads of ballots were shipped under guard to Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.

Hakim, who has spent most of the past 20 years living in exile in Iran, said his party would reach out to other groups when the parliament began writing a new constitution for the country.

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Those days of mass protest are over. Today there are barely a dozen women present. Half are veiled and most have come with male relatives or colleagues for protection. It is a quiet indictment of the occupation and underscores the astonishing collapse in security, particularly for women, that it has brought. "Do you feel how threatening it is to go out in the streets? Can you guarantee that you are safe and alive by the end of the day?" asks Yanar Mohammad, the conference organizer and one of the most ardent women's rights activists in Iraq. "It is the insecurity that handicaps the organizing of women."

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The majority of people in Fallujah, he adds, have hatred and anger in their hearts.

Balwa reflects the sharp divisions in Iraq in the run-up to an election for which 12.5 million people are registered to vote. He reflects on an Iraq divided between those who will vote and those, either through fear or rejection of the process, will stay at home.

He reflects, too, on an Iraq divided between the minority Sunni Muslims, who dominated the Iraq of Saddam Hussein for decades, and southern Shiites and northern Kurds. The latter comprise the 80 percent of the population who were persecuted under Saddam's rule, while the Sunni minority of just 20 percent dominated all areas of Iraqi life, the ruling Baath Party in particular.

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There had been an "intense campaign of intimidation" against Iraqi election officials, said Carlos Valenzuela, a Colombian who has helped to run 14 elections in other parts of the world. Eight Iraqi election staff had been killed and several others had resigned.

But he added: "Preparations have been made all over the country so every eligible voter who wants to go out to vote can do so."

Mr Valenzuela described the vote as a "daunting challenge". He said: "Security in a transitional election is never good, never ideal. But it doesn't disqualify elections from taking place."

He admitted he was concerned about fresh outbreaks of violence in troubled Sunni Muslim towns such as Samarra and Baquba, both north of the capital, and in western Baghdad.

Changes have already been introduced to the voting rules to encourage Sunnis from other violent towns, such as Falluja and Ramadi in the west, and Mosul in the north, to vote.

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Less than five months ago this vast urban slum in east Baghdad was in the grip of a militia that fought running battles with the much more heavily armed and better-trained U.S. forces. The young Iraqi fighters, born into poverty and with poor education, were loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He would regularly denounce the occupation and lambast the Iraqi exiles who dominate the U.S.-appointed government.

Twice last year he orchestrated big uprisings across southern Iraq against the U.S. and British military. But now he has turned to politics. His followers, the more violent end of Iraq's Shiite spectrum, are intent on voting in the Jan. 30 poll. They know that for the first time in centuries they will see a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.

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In interviews, insurgents challenge official U.S. accounts of a decisive victory and claim many of the rebels left the city in a preplanned withdrawal. "It is completely devastated," Fadhil writes in the Guardian Tuesday. "Fallujah used to be a modern city; now there is nothing. We spend that first day going through the rubble that had been the center of the city; I don't see a single building that is functioning."

Most of Fallujah's 300,000 residents fled before the assault, and now some have begun to return to find their homes destroyed, the water and electricity still cut and untreated sewage flowing openly. There is little chance elections can be held there with election day three weeks away.

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Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi extended the state of emergency, which was imposed two months ago before the assault on Fallujah. The order gives him the power to close borders and airports and impose other tight controls, with broader powers of arrest and curfew. It covers the whole of Iraq except the more peaceful Kurdish regions in the north. Allawi said he had taken the decision "because of the continuous atrocities by terrorist gangs to prevent the forming of a widely elected, representative government in Iraq and because of their attempt to delay peaceful participation by all Iraqis."

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At a meeting of hundreds of Sunni figures at a large mosque in Baghdad Tuesday there were further angry calls for a postponement. This combined force is now putting the Jan. 30 election in jeopardy.

"On a logical basis, there are signs that it will be a tough call to hold the election," Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawar told Reuters. He said the U.N. should step in and decide whether it was safe to hold the vote as scheduled. Some in the Iraqi government wanted a delay but did not have the authority to arrange it, he said. Technically, only Iraq's independent election commission has the power to change the date.

"Definitely if a big chunk of the Iraqi population is deprived of participating in elections it will not result in very successful elections," Yawar said. "This election has a unique role of drafting a constitution. How can you draft a constitution unless all ethnicities, sects, religions and political ideologies are included?"

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Some critics have said the announcement is an effort by Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, to strengthen his credibility ahead of the Jan. 30 elections. Western diplomats said the court appearance was unlikely to be a trial, but rather a preliminary part of the investigative process. It is not clear whether Majid has seen a lawyer since he was arrested last year. The announcement came as Allawi announced his candidacy for next month's elections, on the first official day of campaigning.

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The man, in his mid-30s with a trimmed dark beard, studious black-rimmed spectacles and a red-and-white kaffiyeh thrown loosely over his shoulders, gave his name only as Abu Mojahed. Before the war he had been a laborer in Baghdad and was jailed four times under Saddam Hussein's regime because of his adherence to the Salafi creed of Sunni Islam, a strict and conservative belief. He would gather with friends for secret Salafi classes and discussions.

He did not fight when America invaded last year, but did not welcome the war either. "I didn't fight. I stayed at home. If you fight for Saddam and he wins, you are not winning. If America wins, you are not winning," he said. "They freed us from evil but they brought more evil to the country." As the weeks passed, the clerics in the mosques instructed him and his friends to take up arms. "We fight the Americans because they are nonbelievers and they are coming to fight Islam, calling us terrorists," he said.

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However, the U.S. military said some detainees were still eating snacks. "It appears that some detainees have turned back some meals," said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, spokesman for detention operations. "I'm told all have been at least snacking during the day." He said Saddam "continued to take meals and has no change in his routine. He remains in good health." Izzat, who represents Aziz, said the protest began on Saturday morning. He was told about it by a fellow lawyer who met Taha Yassin Ramadan in the jail Sunday.

The strike was in protest of what the prisoners said was bad treatment and enforced solitary confinement, he said. They were also opposed to being handed over to the Iraqi government for trial. "Instead they want a trial in an international court," Izzat said.

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"And, frankly, if we are going to be honorable about our warfare, we are not out there trying to count up bodies. This is not the appropriate way for us to go."

Occasionally the generals have not been able to resist. After the assault on Fallujah last month commanders said at least 1,200 rebels were killed. It was a claim impossible to verify. Even now the city is cordoned off by U.S. troops, the roads leading there are still extremely dangerous, and the Iraqi Red Crescent, the only aid agency operating inside the city, has had to pull out. When it has been possible to investigate the claims they have been difficult to verify.

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Hassan, who had Iraqi nationality and spoke fluent Arabic, was taken from her car as she drove to work at the Care offices in Baghdad on Oct. 19. Two videos emerged, showing her in an increasingly desperate state pleading for her life and asking for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq.

At one point her kidnappers described themselves as an "armed Islamic group." But unlike in previous kidnappings they gave themselves no specific name and used no banners or flags to identify themselves. Again in the final video showing her apparent death, shot in the head by a masked gunman, there was no insignia to identify a particular group.

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There has been limited independent information from inside Fallujah because of the intense fighting and the security cordon around the city. Tens of thousands of residents fled before the fight began, but others stayed behind. The Iraqi government insisted Tuesday night that there was no humanitarian crisis in the city and no civilians had been killed.

But there is evidence to suggest that there have been civilian casualties and shortages of medical care. Lying next to each other in the al-Nouman hospital in Baghdad's Adhamiya district Tuesday were Ala'a Farhan, 11, and his brother Nafar, 7. The elder boy was injured on his left shoulder; the younger child was missing the lower part of his left leg. He lay on a hospital bed still dressed in a jumper and trousers, watching as blood seeped through the dressing on his leg.

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Col. Shupp said casualties could be brought out over the reopened bridge and treated at Fallujah's hospital, adding that he had not heard of any civilians trapped inside the city. The Red Crescent believes at least 150 families are trapped, with many people in desperate need of food, blankets, water and medicine. Some residents still inside the city, contacted by Reuters Sunday, said their children were suffering from diarrhea and had not eaten for days.

Asked what he would do about the families and other noncombatants in the city, Col. Shupp said: "I haven't heard that myself, and the Iraqi soldiers didn't tell me about that. We want to help them as much as we can. We are on the radio telling them how to come out and how to come up to coalition forces."

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"Holding free and fair elections on time is an obligation that we have undertaken towards the Iraqi people," he said. But he added: "Nearer the time, the Iraqi government, the United Nations, the independent election commission and the National Assembly will have to engage in a real and hard-headed dialogue to assess the situation." It is the first time a senior figure in the interim government has acknowledged that the dire security situation in large parts of the country could affect the political process.

Sunday, as U.S. troops widened their control of the insurgent bastion of Fallujah, Marines found what appeared to be the mutilated body of a Western woman. Only two foreign women are being held by kidnappers: Margaret Hassan, 59, the British-Iraqi director of the charity Care International, and Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, a Polish woman who has lived in Iraq for many years. One officer said he was "80 percent sure" the body was a Western woman. It was found in the street, covered with a cloth soaked in blood.

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Elsewhere, a suicide car bomb exploded at an Iraqi National Guard camp at the K-1 oil pumping station in Kirkuk, in the north, killing at least three people and injuring several others. Hospital officials said 32 Iraqis were injured in raids on police stations in the towns of Burhiz and Mafrag, near Baquba, by groups armed with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades at around 7 a.m. A guarded bridge was also hit. At least one of the attackers was killed and the police stations were badly damaged.

An Islamist Web site warned Iraqis to stay at home Wednesday in Baghdad and other cities or they would be "putting their lives in danger." The statement, in the name of eight known militant groups, said the unified "Islamic resistance" would step up operations against the "American enemy" in retaliation for the U.S.-led attack on Fallujah.

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Some American military officers estimated Tuesday night that a third of the city had been taken. Meanwhile, U.S. officials said 10 American and two Iraqi soldiers had died there since the offensive began. Although some officers reported heavy resistance in some districts, overall the insurgents appeared to have put up less of a coordinated fight than expected.

"We expected a much fiercer reaction," said Maj. Gen. Abdul Qader Mohammed Jassem, head of Iraqi forces in Fallujah and the province's new military governor. He admitted some of the fighters may have already left. "There is movement in and out. It is a vast and difficult area. Some people even swim in and out," he said.

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No shots were fired during the capture, although one Iraqi soldier accidentally shot himself in the leg, and 38 people were arrested, four of them foreign Arabs. The Euphrates River runs through the western edge of Fallujah, cutting off the hospital from the city. U.S. Marines also seized two bridges near the hospital, clearly an effort to establish the river as a natural barrier on the western flank.

One unnamed senior American officer acknowledged that the hospital had become a "center of propaganda," reflecting the military's frustration at the high death tolls doctors frequently announce after American bombing raids. It was accounts of the hundreds killed during the first assault on Fallujah in April that brought the operation to a rapid halt and produced a badly thought-out cease-fire that only strengthened the hands of the insurgents.

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They were halfway through a monthlong "reeducation" course organized for senior members of the party by Iraq's Supreme National Commission for De-Baathification. Once they have attended the eight lectures and signed papers renouncing the party, they will be given a letter of recommendation and some will have the chance to return to their jobs. Most of those present at this first course were senior schoolteachers or officials in the Education Ministry.

"We ask you to put your hands together with our hands," Khafaji told his audience. "We are not here to fight you or cut off your source of income. Our purpose to is build Iraq by cooperation between every single Iraqi who wants to help. You are educational people; we cannot just dismiss you."

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