Insurgents gear up for Fallujah street battles

Many of the side streets off the main east-west road cutting through the city have been barricaded with cement blocks and sandbags to guard the fighters' movements against US snipers.

The fighters have also set up various positions in deserted and destroyed parts of the city, but they only show up there when US war planes strike or shelling starts, according to an AFP correspondent inside the insurgent stronghold.

Each fighter belongs to a squad that is itself part of a higher unit. The leaders keep a low profile and are only known to their men.

They are very structured due to the influence of former intelligence and army officers in Saddam Hussein's regime believed to be among their ranks.

"For months now, US troops have been preparing for the battle of Fallujah and the resistance has been doing the same," says Sheikh Abdul Munim al-Badrani, a Fallujah native and member of the executive arm of the influential Sunni Committee of Muslim Scholars.