US forces, backed by Iraqi troops, kicked off an all-out offensive on Iraq's rebel-held city of Fallujah Monday evening just after Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi signaled the green light to US-Iraqi forces to neutralize insurgents in Fallujah. (Photo: Xinhua/AFP)

US armored vehicles were seen moving toward Fallujah late Sunday, as Iraq's interim government declared 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 up for a major offensive on the city, where people had piled up sandbags and placed roadblocks in the streets to face a looming invasion.

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

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

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has warned that time is running short for the citizens to hand over Jordanian militant Abu Mussabal-Zarqawi and his loyalists holed up there but he refused to say when 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 set of detailed rules, including curfews, are to be announced on Monday.

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

The declaration followed a pair of bold assaults Sunday on two police stations in northwestern Iraq, killing a score of policemen including a high-rank officer in a way of mass-execution that resembled 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 the responsibility for a series of coordinated attacks on four police stations in Samarra that left 37 people, including 24 policemen,dead on Saturday.

Iraq's fledging police and the National Guard, trained and backed 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 wounded in three separate car bombings in Baghdad on Sunday, said the US military.

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