US armored vehicles were seenmoving toward Fallujah late Sunday, as Iraq's interim governmentdeclared a state of emergency for two months.

Witnesses said tanks and humvees positioned west of Fallujah, 50km west of Baghdad, started to move toward the edge of the city,the soldiers were spraying cannon over the bare field.

US marines and Iraqi forces surrounding Fallujah were gearing upfor a major offensive on the city, where people had piled upsandbags and placed roadblocks in the streets to face a loominginvasion.

US war planes and artillery had been launching nightly raids onthe outskirts of Fallujah, targeting insurgent fighting positionsand weapon caches. Fallujah General Hospital often reported deathsand injuries of civilians, some of them women and children.

While almost two-thirds of the 300,000 residents have fled therestive town, a number of between 1,000 and 5,000 men were stayingin their houses and determined to fight to the last.

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has warned that time is runningshort for the citizens to hand over Jordanian militant Abu Mussabal-Zarqawi and his loyalists holed up there but he refused to saywhen the ultimatum would expire.

Allawi declared on Sunday a state of emergency for 60 daysexcept for the Kurdish self-ruled area in northern Iraq, and a setof detailed rules, including curfews, are to be announced onMonday.

His spokesman Hassan al-Naqeeb told a press conference that thedeclaration did not mean the massive operation against Fallujah isimminent but the government is bent on restoring order to pave theway for the elections due in January.

The declaration followed a pair of bold assaults Sunday on twopolice stations in northwestern Iraq, killing a score of policemenincluding a high-rank officer in a way of mass-execution thatresembled Iraq's former regime. A total of 12 Iraqi National Guardswere also shot dead in central southern Iraq, reports said.

The militant group led by Zarqawi meanwhile claimed theresponsibility for a series of coordinated attacks on four policestations in Samarra that left 37 people, including 24 policemen,dead on Saturday.

Iraq's fledging police and the National Guard, trained andbacked by the US-led multinational forces, have born the brunt ofthe anti-US armed attacks in the last months.

Two US soldiers and one Iraqi were killed and six others woundedin three separate car bombings in Baghdad on Sunday, said the USmilitary.

Another car bomb detonated near the Baghdad residence of IraqiFinance Minister Adel Abdul-Mehdi, killing one of his bodyguardsand injuring six neighbors. The minister was not at home at thetime of the explosion, said a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.

Source: Xinhua