BAGHDAD, May 13: The Iraqi Red Crescent said on Friday it had started distributing food and medical supplies to hundreds of families fleeing fierce fighting between US troops and militants loyal to Abu Musab al Zarqawi.

“A team of 15 people and three trucks with tents, kitchen utensils, water, medical supplies and food arrived in Akashat to distribute aid,” Red Crescent official Mazen Abdallah said. About 350 displaced families are staying in schools, mosques and public buildings in the desolate desert village of Akashat near the border with Syria, Mr Abdallah said.

Hundreds of families are believed to have fled the fighting between US troops and guerillas around the border town of Al Qaim, about 350 kilometres west of Baghdad. Al Qaim is believed to be a base for guerillas loyal to Zarqawi, Al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq who has a 25 million dollar price on his head and has claimed some of the deadliest attacks and the beheading of foreign hostages.

US marines launched their assault in the area on May 7, the largest offensive since the November strike on Fallujah, to cut the resistance’s supply of arms and foreign fighters. Mr Abdallah said the Red Crescent team planned to go to Mashari, a village near Akashat, where 400 families are believed to have sought refuge.

“Mashari’s needs are more important than Akashat’s,” Mr Abdallah said. “We will send a second convoy there from Baghdad in two or three days.”

A Red Crescent team in Ramadi, 110 kilometres west of Baghdad, went to Anah, Rawa and Al Hudaid, towns on the Euphrates river close to the fighting, to distribute aid to another 500 families, Mr Abdallah said.

However, the exact number of people displaced by fighting could not be verified with other sources.

The US military claims it killed more than 100 militants loyal to Zarqawi.

Zarqawi’s organization has denied the figure and said that its own fighters killed some 40 marines.

In recent weeks, the Iraqi government had issued a string of statements announcing the arrests of several of the Jordanian-born extremist leader’s top lieutenants.—AFP