FALLUJAH, Iraq -- When a loud crack sounded from the adjacent building in Fallujah on Thursday, the frontline Marines chalked the blast up to their noisy new neighbors and waited for the report of another "kill."

The new Iraqi Counter Terrorism Force soldiers hidden in the house next door had just fired on a man carrying an AK-47 assault rifle in a neighborhood where U.S. forces have declared there are "no friendlies."

As the violent stalemate in Fallujah bags a third week, the appearance of specially trained Iraqi snipers this week was a welcome development for Marines at the front -- and an opportunity for the Iraqis and their U.S. Army Special Forces advisers to prove that not all Iraqi troops will cut and run when the shooting starts.

"They're doing all right -- damned good shots, actually," a U.S. Special Forces adviser said Thursday, refusing to give his name.

He said his small team of Iraqi Counter Terrorism Forces, part of a larger group of tough Iraqi volunteers who recently returned from four months of training in Jordan, were on their way to becoming a lethal weapon against the insurgents of Fallujah and elsewhere in the beleaguered country.

"We're kind of moving in steps, one at a time," he said of enlisting the Iraqis in the fighting along Fallujah's northern edge. "They can't learn everything at once, but we're trying."

Iraqi troops motivated

The Iraqi troops sounded even more confident than their American trainers Thursday, saying that with the Marines and Army Special Forces soldiers at their sides, they could clean Iraq of "terrorists" and rescue it from anarchy within a year.

"We came to Fallujah to kill terrorists," one 31-year-old Shia soldier who identified himself as Abu Sajad said through an interpreter.

"Why else come to Fallujah," he said. "The Iraqi and American special forces will cleanse Fallujah of the terrorists and foreigners who contaminate it."

Like his comrades, Sajad wears a scarf over his face and dark sunglasses under his Kevlar helmet to hide his identity.

During a break from shooting insurgents Thursday, he and two comrades eased back into the soft couch in the living room of an Iraqi home that Marines recently "requisitioned."

Holding a heavy, black Remington sniper rifle in one gloved hand and gesticulating wildly with the other, Sajad said he was abused under Saddam Hussein.

Although he was a soldier in the Iraqi army, he said he was jailed for a year because he visited the Shia holy city of Karbala to worship at the Mosque of the Imam Hussein. Shias under the Sunni Baathist rule were barred from observing Shia holy days and festivals.

Now, he said, he and the others are fighting and killing some of those who enforced such policies, some of them former fellow soldiers in the Iraqi military who are now fighting the Americans in Fallujah.

Iraqis had shaky start

While the Army paratrooper battalion that preceded the Marines in Fallujah had organized two battalions, or about 2,000, Iraqi Civil Defense Corps troops, the Marines had only a few weeks to work with the new soldiers before they pushed the situation in Fallujah over the edge and into all-out warfare.

When the lead started flying April 5, almost all of the Iraqi troops deserted their posts, refused to show up for duty, or were not trusted by some Marine units to be allowed near the front lines.

About the only Iraqis who joined the fight in Fallujah were some 40 Iraqi Special Forces of the 36th Battalion from Baghdad -- a ragtag militia of mostly Kurdish fighters who seemed eager to storm the city and "kill 'em all," according to their American adviser from the 5th Army Special Forces Group.

With only a handful of Iraqi troops -- who quickly became an even smaller and almost exclusively Kurdish militia after a dozen of its Shiite members mutinied before a raid on a mosque in a nearby village -- the U.S. leaders could hardly boast of a meaningful Iraqi contribution to the war effort in Fallujah.

It was clear that even with the transfer of power to an Iraqi government looming just two months away, the battle of Fallujah was an American fight, and a success or failure would be an American victory or failure in Fallujah -- not an Iraqi one.

U.S. efforts to Iraq-ize the war seemed to have failed in Fallujah.

But this new group of Iraqi special forces, the ICTF, was just one of the signs that the United States might be renewing efforts to turn over the fight against the insurgents to the Iraqis themselves.

Iraqi forces, many of them the ICDC troops who deserted earlier, are training with Marines for joint patrols of the city. The patrols were promised this week, but Marine officials thought better and gave the forces more time to train together.

Another sign was the rumor circulating around the front lines Thursday night that an Iraqi general would soon be calling the shots in Fallujah, leading a force of at least 1,000 Iraqi troops into the city by today.

(Wire services confirmed later Thursday that a former general in Saddam's army would lead such forces, and that his group might be made up largely of insurgents who would switch from fighting Americans to shooting at former comrades.)

Although the development was being reported by news agencies late Thursday night in Iraq, troops on the northern and western fronts were still battling insurgents with small arms, tanks and airstrikes.

Rebels' rockets lit up the sky as they hit in the southwest, where U.S. Army soldiers have relieved some Marine units.

"I've heard that, but nothing has been passed by battalion," said Capt. Kyle Stoddard, commander of one of the Marine infantry companies in the north. "Marines have been asking me that all day. I can only tell them, 'I don't know.' "

Iraqis not ready to stand alone

The Iraqi special forces troops, however, say they are not yet ready to put an all-Iraqi face on the war and, for the time being, will remain a clandestine force under masks and scarves content to fight alongside the Americans.

"We (special forces) are Shia, Sunna and Kurd. We are all Muslim," said 24-year-old Abu Ahmed, a Sunni soldier who said that not even his family knows he is a soldier working with the Americans.

"I came here to fight terrorists and save Fallujah," he said. "With the Americans we can do this. My family will understand someday what I have done for them."

Abu Yasser, 25, who said he was also Shia, said what the Americans needed to do was to arm and train more special forces and provide more money for informants in Fallujah. He said many of the insurgents, especially the former soldiers, were motivated by cash.

Yasser said he joined with the Americans because he despised the old regime.

"Saddam killed my father," Yasser said from beneath an olive drab helmet and thin, dark shades. "He was working with the (Shia) party and they murdered him."

While the Iraqi troops seemed genuine in their hatred for Saddam and the insurgents, they also seemed convinced that their American special forces counterparts would be there to support them forever.

"The future is with the coalition forces," said Sajad, who said that his vision of Iraq in five years would be "like New York." He said he had never been to New York, but it "looks good in the movies."

Sajad said he also had more practical hopes for the short run.

"Cash and guns -- American guns like these," Sajad said, grunting from beneath his disguise and tapping his outstretched fingers on the barrel of his U.S. Army-issued M-4 carbine slung across his chest.

"I want people to know that we are Iraqis. All of us are Iraqis and Muslim," he said. "We will not stop until we kill all the terrorists, all the Baathists, and everyone who worked with Saddam."

Staff writer Darrin Mortenson and staff photographer Hayne Palmour are reporting from Iraq, where they are with Camp Pendleton Marines. Their coverage is collected at www.nctimes.com/military/iraq.