Posted on 11/09/2004 12:45:27 PM PST by Brilliant
FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. forces backed by Iraqi troops surged into the heart of Falluja on Tuesday, taking a grip on Iraq (news - web sites)'s most rebellious city after a day of intense street-to-street combat.
U.S. tanks and armored personnel carriers operating in the northern part of the city came under fierce assault from rebels firing rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 rifles after sunset, but in other areas large-scale fighting died down after dark.
There was the occasional blast of mortar fire, and U.S. war planes targeted some buildings, but residents and a Reuters correspondent said heavy bombardments and explosions had eased.
Some U.S. tanks were seen pulling back from central areas of the city for the night. Others remained in place.
An American soldier wounded in Falluja said he had seen two of his colleagues killed.
"A buddy of mine and another soldier were killed and I have seen about 50 other wounded (U.S.) soldiers since the fighting began," he told Reuters while awaiting medical evacuation. He declined to give his name.
The Reuters correspondent saw about five wounded soldiers being flown out by helicopter and a U.S. military ambulance driver also said he had witnessed many casualties.
Among the Iraqis killed was a 9-year-old boy, severely injured by shrapnel in the abdomen when his home was bombarded by U.S. jets overnight. His parents were unable to get him to hospital and he died hours later of blood loss, they said.
As battles raged in Falluja, insurgents hit back elsewhere with attacks on police stations in Baquba and Baghdad, fighting in Ramadi and a mortar attack in the northern city of Mosul.
But in Baquba, the official in charge of the main morgue denied earlier reports that 45 were killed in the attacks claimed by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He said he had not dealt with any dead from the attacks.
Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, making fresh use of emergency powers he activated on Sunday, imposed a night curfew on Baghdad for an indefinite period. The curfew will hold from 10:30 p.m. (1930 GMT) to 4 a.m. (0100 GMT) from Tuesday night.
U.S., IRAQI CASUALTIES
The military has given no figures for U.S. casualties since the assault on Falluja began on Monday evening.
There has also been no word on the number of civilian casualties. Residents said a U.S. air strike hit a clinic in a central district, killing medical staff and patients.
A Marines tank company commander -- part of a U.S.-led force of at least 10,000 -- said earlier that guerrillas were battling hard in Falluja's northern Jolan district.
"They are putting up a strong fight and I saw many of them on the street I was on," Captain Robert Bodisch told Reuters.
Many families fled the city of 300,000 to escape air raids before the offensive. The U.S. military said about 150,000 residents had taken refuge outside Falluja.
Residents said they had no power and used kerosene lamps at night. They kept to ground floors for safety. Telephones were erratic. Food shops had been closed for six days.
Iraqi troops brought nine handcuffed prisoners to a railway station on the northern edge of the Jolan area where U.S. and Iraqi forces are based. They said two of them were Egyptians and one was Syrian. The rest were Iraqis.
The interim Iraqi government and its U.S. backers say foreign Muslim militants led by al-Zarqawi are holed up in Falluja along with Iraqi rebels.
POLICE STATION RAIDS
A suspected car bomb outside an Iraqi National Guard base near Kirkuk killed three people and wounded two. In Samarra, a senior local government official was assassinated, police said.
Sami al-Jumaili, a doctor at the main Falluja hospital who escaped arrest when it was taken on Monday, said the city was running out of supplies and only a few clinics remained open.
"There is not a single surgeon in Falluja. We had one ambulance hit by U.S. fire and a doctor wounded. There are scores of injured civilians in their homes whom we can't move.
"A 13-year-old child just died in my hands," he said by telephone from a house where he had gone to help the wounded.
The government sees Falluja and its sister city of Ramadi as rebel havens that must be retaken before January elections.
Allawi urged the gunmen in Falluja to lay down their weapons to spare it from further attacks, his spokesman told reporters near Falluja. "The political solution is possible even if military operations are ongoing," spokesman Thaer al-Naqib said.
The authorities have appointed a temporary military governor for Falluja, Major-General Abdul Qadar Mohammed Jassim, the commander of the military operations in Falluja, he added. Jassim's name was earlier given differently by officials.
Defense experts believe that while U.S. forces have the muscle to win the battle of Falluja, victory still may not deal a lasting blow to the insurgency in Iraq.
"It may not take long to capture the city, but nothing will have been resolved. It will be a symbolic victory," French military strategist Jean-Louis Dufour said. (With additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim, Luke Baker, Khaled Oweis and Lin Noueihed in Baghdad)
They may be right, but since the media has such low credibility these days, I wouldn't assume so.
Co-written by Fadel al-Badrani.
A lousy propaganda piece.
thats good ask the french... like they know how to win a war...
French military strategist.....Isn't that an oxymoron?
French strategist?? Did he pass the course that shows you how to hide behind a woman's skirt during wartime?
Exactly. French military strategy: Drop rifle, point to where your women are hiding, then raise hands.
I take anything they said with a grain of salt.
Going into combat without the French is like going Deer hunting without your accordian
What does he mean, nothing will have been resolved? We will have retaken Fallujah and killed a boatload of terrorists. And since when are symbolic victories nothing? Not that the French would know anything about victories, symbolic or otherwise.
Symbolic? Like destroying the Ivory Coast's entire air force?
The French military is symbolic.
This from the people fighting for "hot chocolate".
LOL. Funny that the only French that know how to fight aren't French...Ever wonder why The FOREIGN Legion exists?
The French have military strategists? What do they do, manufacture white flags?
His comments are understandable given his nationality ... he's thinking along the lines of Dien Bien Phu (French loss of a fortified position).
The Americans are thinking Khe Sahn (successful defense of a fortified position that resulted in LOTS of enemy dead).
By taking the city center, holding it and fortifying it we're forcing the bad guys to come out and play on our terms.
From the French Military Strategy Field Manual: Bombard oncoming hordes with day old bread.
It's propaganda. Some facts could be correct but they aren't stating what the circumstances were. Also their putting the emphasis on what it took to take the center of Fallujah and not on what's been accomplished.
I expect to see more of this lean from the press. I noticed during the press conference the military gave today that a few members of the press were very hostile in the tone of their questions. Frankly they can all go and shove it.
Bwaaaahaaahaaa - that's a good one! How hard is it to figure out how to surrender?
Shouldn't the French stick to what they do best - shoot indescrimately into crowds then run away.
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