US bombs Falluja, rebels hit Samarra

Most of the city’s 300,000 people have already fled. After Friday night’s barrage, many more streamed out of the city to the northwest. The US military said an air strike after midnight smashed three ‘‘barricaded fighting positions’’ .

With a US-led offensive on Falluja apparently imminent, insurgents hit back with car bombs and attacks on police stations in Samarra. The last of the fourth blast occurred when a suicide bomber rammed a car into a police station, killing 10 Iraqi police officers and wounding five, police said.

A health official said 23 people, including nine policemen, were killed and 40 wounded, among them 17 policemen, in the first three bomb explosions in the Sunni Muslim city. The local commander of the Iraqi Rapid Reaction Force, Brigadier Abdul-Razzak al-Jarmin, was among the dead in the first two blasts. Residents said the US military had declared a curfew due to start at midday.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned the United States, Britain and Iraq that an assault on Falluja risked further dividing the Iraqi people and undermining planned January elections. Annan said the letters sent on Sunday to US President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi were ‘‘a privileged communication” that he did not want to comment on.

Meanwhile, Zarqawi’s group has said it was behind a suicide car bombing on Thursday.