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Azhar Shallal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Armed tribesmen and Iraqi police officers stood guard on Thursday as clashes raged in Ramadi, west of Baghdad.

BAGHDAD — Radical Sunni militants aligned with Al Qaeda fought for control of Falluja and Ramadi on Friday, escalating a battle over the two cities that have increasingly become centers of Sunni extremism since American forces withdrew from the country at the end of 2011.

Over the past several days, the Iraqi government has rushed troop reinforcements to the areas in the western province of Anbar, where the militants, dressed in black and waving the flag of Al Qaeda, have commandeered mosque loudspeakers to call for supporters to join their struggle. On Thursday, they set fire to police stations, freed prisoners from jail and occupied mosques.

The fighting picked up again on Friday after what appeared to be a morning lull.

In Falluja, traffic police officers returned to work and municipal workers cleaned the streets and fixed electricity lines. Messages broadcast from mosque loudspeakers asked merchants to reopen their shops because residents had begun running out of food after days of fighting.

Later in the day, the calm was shattered. Local imams had decided to hold Friday prayers in a public park, rather than in areas closer to the fighting, and as services were concluding large numbers of masked militants affiliated with Al Qaeda appeared and took the stage. Waving a black flag, one fighter shouted to the crowd: "We declare Falluja as an Islamic state and we call on you to be on our side."

"We are here to defend you from the army of Maliki and the Iranian Safavids," the fighter continued. "We welcome the return of all workers, even the local police, but they have to be under our state and our rule."

Also on Friday, gunmen blew up several government buildings in Falluja, including the police headquarters, the local council and the office of the mayor, according to a security official.

As fighting spread, the militants recaptured that had been liberated by security forces and their tribal allies. Fighting was also said to have picked up again in Ramadi, and one official said four soldiers had been killed.

There were no immediate reports of other confirmed casualties on Friday. On Thursday, it was not possible, amid the unfolding chaos, to determine a precise number of casualties, but officials in hospitals in Anbar Province reported at least 35 people killed and more than 70 wounded. Security officials said the toll over several days of fighting was 108 dead, including 31 civilians and 35 militants. The rest of the dead were Iraqi security force members.

Falluja and Ramadi are the two largest and most important cities in Anbar. The province holds grave historical significance for the United States, which asserted when its forces withdrew from the country that Iraq was on track to become a stable democracy.

The province also represents the place where the United States witnessed its greatest losses, and perhaps its most significant success, during the eight-year war.

Nearly one-third of the American soldiers killed in the war died trying to pacify Anbar, and Americans fought two battles for control of Falluja, in some of the bloodiest combat that American troops had faced since Vietnam.

The violence in Ramadi and Falluja had implications beyond Anbar's borders, as the Sunni militants fought beneath the same banner as the most hard-line jihadists they have inspired in Syria — the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

That fighting, and a deadly bombing in the Beirut area on Thursday, provided the latest evidence that the Syrian civil war was helping breed bloodshed and sectarian violence around the region, further destabilizing Lebanon and Iraq while fueling a resurgence of radical Islamist fighters.

The latest fighting began after Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, ordered security forces to dismantle protest encampments in Falluja and Ramadi.

The order came after fighting erupted following the government's arrest of a prominent Sunni lawmaker who had been a supporter of the protests, which had been going on for more than a year and had become an outlet for disenchanted Sunnis angered over their treatment by Mr. Maliki's Shiite-dominated government. The arrest attempt set off a firefight that left several bodyguards and the brother of the lawmaker dead, and led to clashes between the government and armed tribesmen.

Officials later seemed to have calmed the situation, and in a deal between local tribal leaders and the central government, Mr. Maliki agreed to withdraw army troops from Anbar on Tuesday.