2,000 Fallujah Residents Return Home 
About 100 people, some of them women, lined up at an Iraqi National Guard checkpoint east of Fallujah on Thursday, December 23, 2004, waiting to receive passes to enter the city. An estimated 2,000 people were expected to be the first ones to make their trip home after most fled the city of 300,000 on the advent of the US assault on the resistance stronghold last month. National Security Advisor Qassem Daoud highlighted the amount of damage in Fallujah: "There are some destroyed houses and some wreckage, with mines and explosives inside and even on the streets."