By SABAH JERGIS, AP

BAGHDAD, Iraq (April 18) - Marines battled a large force of Iraqi insurgents near the Syrian border Sunday in fighting that killed five Marines. At least 10 Iraqis, including the city police chief, were also killed, according to a hospital official.

The fighting at the town of Husaybah, on the Syrian border, appeared to be related to insurgent violence in the western towns of Fallujah and Ramadi.

It began when insurgents ambushed Marines in the city on Saturday, sparking a 14-hour-battle with hundreds of gunmen. Fighting continued Sunday in three neighborhoods of the city, which was sealed off by U.S. forces.

Five Marines were killed in the initial ambush and nine more were wounded throughout the fighting, an embedded journalist from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Ten Iraqis were killed and 30 wounded - a mixture of insurgent fighters and civilian bystanders, said Hamid al-Alousi, a doctor at the hospital in the nearby city of Qaim, 240 miles west of Baghdad.

Some were shot by Marine snipers as they left their homes to use outdoor toilets behind their houses, the doctor told the Arab television station Al-Arabiyah.

Husaybah police director Imad al-Mahlawi was one of those killed by American snipers, according to a man who identified himself as al-Mahlawi's cousin, Adel Ezzeddin, Al-Arabiya reported.

According to Marine intelligence, nearly 300 Iraqi mujahedeen fighters from Fallujah and Ramadi launched the offensive in an outpost next to Husaybah, first setting off a roadside bomb to lure Marines out of their base and then firing 24 mortars as the Marines responded to the first attack, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch correspondent reported.

Marines have been battling Sunni insurgents in a siege of Fallujah, 35 miles west of the capital, and guerrilla activity has surged in nearby Ramadi, where 12 Marines were killed in an ambush on April 6.

04/18/04 08:02 EDT