Qaeda

BAGHDAD - Radical Sunni militants aligned with Al Qaeda fought for control of Falluja and Ramadi on Friday, escalating a battle over the two cities that have increasingly become centers of Sunni extremism since American forces withdrew from the country at the end of 2011.

Over the past several days, the Iraqi government has rushed troop reinforcements to the areas in the western province of Anbar, where the militants, dressed in black and waving the flag of Al Qaeda, have commandeered mosque loudspeakers to call for supporters to join their struggle. On Thursday, they set fire to police stations, freed prisoners from jail and occupied mosques.

The fighting picked up again on Friday after what appeared to be a morning lull.

In Falluja, traffic police officers returned to work and municipal workers cleaned the streets and fixed electricity lines. Messages broadcast from mosque loudspeakers asked merchants to reopen their shops because residents had begun running out of food after days of fighting.

Later in the day, the calm was shattered. Local imams had decided to hold Friday prayers in a public park, rather than in areas closer to the fighting, and as services were concluding large numbers of masked militants affiliated with Al Qaeda appeared and took the stage. Waving a black flag, one fighter shouted to the crowd: 'We declare Falluja as an Islamic state and we call on you to be on our side.'

'We are here to defend you from the army of Maliki and the Iranian Safavids,' the fighter continued. 'We welcome the return of all workers, even the local police, but they have to be under our state and our rule.'

Also on Friday, gunmen blew up several government buildings in Falluja, including the police headquarters, the local council and the office of the mayor, according to a security official.

As fighting spread, the militants recaptured that had been liberated by security forces and their tribal allies. Fighting was also said to have picked up again in Ramadi, and one official said four soldiers had been killed.

There were no immediate reports of other confirmed casualties on Friday. On Thursday, it was not possible, amid the unfolding chaos, to determine a precise number of casualties, but officials in hospitals in Anbar Province reported at least 35 people killed and more than 70 wounded. Security officials said the toll over several days of fighting was 108 dead, including 31 civilians and 35 militants. The rest of the dead were Iraqi security force members.

Falluja and Ramadi are the two largest and most important cities in Anbar. The province holds grave historical significance for the United States, which asserted when its forces withdrew from the country that Iraq was on track to become a stable democracy.

The province also represents the place where the United States witnessed its greatest losses, and perhaps its most significant success, during the eight-year war.

Nearly one-third of the American soldiers killed in the war died trying to pacify Anbar, and Americans fought two battles for control of Falluja, in some of the bloodiest combat that American troops had faced since Vietnam.

The violence in Ramadi and Falluja had implications beyond Anbar's borders, as the Sunni militants fought beneath the same banner as the most hard-line jihadists they have inspired in Syria - the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

That fighting, and a deadly bombing in the Beirut area on Thursday, provided the latest evidence that the Syrian civil war was helping breed bloodshed and sectarian violence around the region, further destabilizing Lebanon and Iraq while fueling a resurgence of radical Islamist fighters.

The latest fighting began after Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, ordered security forces to dismantle protest encampments in Falluja and Ramadi.

The order came after fighting erupted following the government's arrest of a prominent Sunni lawmaker who had been a supporter of the protests, which had been going on for more than a year and had become an outlet for disenchanted Sunnis angered over their treatment by Mr. Maliki's Shiite-dominated government. The arrest attempt set off a firefight that left several bodyguards and the brother of the lawmaker dead, and led to clashes between the government and armed tribesmen.

Officials later seemed to have calmed the situation, and in a deal between local tribal leaders and the central government, Mr. Maliki agreed to withdraw army troops from Anbar on Tuesday.

But as soon as any trace of government authority vanished, large numbers of Qaeda-aligned fighters attacked the cities, and by Wednesday the prime minister reversed his decision. He sent troops to try to secure the support of local tribal leaders, offering them guns and money to join forces with the regular army.

In a telephone interview on Thursday, one tribal fighter loyal to the government, Abu Omar, described heavy clashes across Falluja, and said the government had started shelling militant hide-outs.

'We told all the families to leave their houses,' he said over the phone, with the sound of gunfire in the background. 'Many of the families fled from the city, and others are still unable to because of the heavy clashes. We have reports that the hospital in Falluja is full of dead and wounded people.'

Many of the tribesmen fighting alongside government security forces have been doing so reluctantly, making the calculation that, in this case, the government is the lesser evil than Al Qaeda.

Sheikh Hamed Rasheed Muhana echoed what many Sunnis in Iraq feel when he complained that the government had alienated Sunnis with harsh security crackdowns and mass arrests of Sunni men, militants and ordinary civilians alike. He said the government had worsened matters by 'creating more depressed people willing to join Al Qaeda because of the sectarian behavior and ongoing arrests.'

Also on Thursday, in a move that seemed calculated to appease Sunni resentment, the government arrested a Shiite militia leader in Baghdad who is believed to be the leader of the Iraqi affiliate of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group.

Thursday was the fourth consecutive day of battles in Anbar. Late in the afternoon, security officials said the government had regained some territory in Ramadi but that fighting was still fierce in Falluja, where militants controlled a much larger portion of the city than they did in Ramadi.

It was not immediately clear how much terrain had been taken into control by the militants on Friday.

With Iraqi casualty rates at their highest in five years, the United States has rushed to provide the Iraqi government with new missiles and surveillance drones to combat the resurgence of Al Qaeda.

American officials have been in touch with the Maliki government and its Sunni critics, trying to encourage them to join forces against Al Qaeda.

'We've encouraged the government to work with the population to fight these terrorists,' said Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman.

The chaos in Anbar has underscored the steady deterioration of Iraq's security since the withdrawal of American forces. The battles have heightened fears that Iraq is descending into the type of sectarian civil war that it once faced during the American-led occupation.

The center of that unrest was in the desert region of Anbar, a cradle of Sunni discontent where swaggering tribesmen defied authority even under Saddam Hussein. An American pact with those Anbar tribesmen in 2007 - to pay them to switch sides and fight alongside the United States against Al Qaeda - became known as the Awakening and is considered partly responsible for turning the tide of the war.

Abu Risha, a leading tribal sheikh in Ramadi, was perhaps the Americans' most stalwart partner, and even today he is likely to show visitors the plaques he received from American officers, and old pictures of him with American soldiers, even as he speaks of what he calls betrayal by the United States for leaving without finishing the job.

In a statement released this week, he exhorted his men to again fight Al Qaeda, and hinted at business left unfinished by the Americans.

'We were all surprised that the terrorists left the desert and entered your cities to return a second time, to commit their crimes, to cut off the heads, blow up houses, kill scholars and disrupt life,' he said. 'They came back, and I am delighted for their public appearance after the security forces failed to find them. Let this time be the decisive confrontation with Al Qaeda.'

In another indication that the war in Syria is reverberating back here, Iraqis who fled the country by the thousands after the American invasion and then began to return as the fighting eased are becoming refugees again.

Analysts have long worried that the war in Syria would engulf Iraq, as hard-line Sunni rebels in Syria have said they see the two countries as one battlefield in the fight for Sunni dominance. For some time, the Syrian war has dragged in Iraqis along sectarian lines, with Iraqi Shiites rushing to Syria to support the government of President Bashar al-Assad, and Iraq's Qaeda affiliate fostering the most extremist Sunni fighting units across the border.

Yasir Ghazi reported from Baghdad, and Tim Arango from Istanbul. An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Falluja, Iraq, and Michael R. Gordon from Jerusalem.