Fallujah fighting continues, attacks elsewhere increase
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By Margaret Coker and George Edmondson Cox News Service - Published: November 12, 2004
FALLUJAH, Iraq — U.S. and Iraqi forces continued fighting with guerrillas in Fallujah on Thursday as deadly insurgent attacks took their toll in other areas of the country.
The military said Thursday evening that 18 U.S. service members, along with five of their Iraqi counterparts, had been killed since the operation began Monday against rebels in the Sunni Muslim city 40 miles west of Baghdad. The number of wounded in action was listed as 178 for U.S. forces and 34 for Iraqi forces.
Amid reports of a new push by U.S. air and ground forces into southern Fallujah, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said "hundreds and hundreds" of insurgents had been killed or captured and that about 70 percent of the city was under U.S. control.
"We're exactly on plan," Myers said on NBC "Today" show, one of several programs where he appeared as part of Veterans Day recognition. On the CBS "Early Show," Myers expressed the hope that in the "next few days we'll be able to return Fallujah to the citizens there."
Fallujah on Thursday started to stink of death as the bloated bodies of the Iraqi insurgents dotted the streets of the Jolan neighborhood in the northern part of the city.
Massive destruction, brought by both U.S. air raids and the ground invasion, was evident. Some buildings had been reduced to rubble. Ash fell from the sky from fires burning across the city. Smoke billowed hundreds of feet into the air from an unknown building in the southern part of Fallujah after intensive U.S. airstrikes.
Brazen assaults in Baghdad and Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, increased concern that a number of the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 insurgents once in Fallujah had slipped out before the assault and were staging attacks elsewhere. Among those believed to have fled Fallujah is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born terrorist who is the most wanted fugitive in Iraq.
U.S. officials said forces from the Stryker Brigade Combat Team had begun offensive operations in Mosul after insurgents attacked nine police stations and other parts of the city, including a food warehouse. "In several cases, anti-Iraqi forces exceeded the capabilities of the police on site, requiring reinforcements," a U.S. military statement acknowledged.
The Reuters news agency quoted residents reporting that insurgents had set fire to police stations, stolen weapons and were roaming the streets.
"It's crazy, really, really crazy," one Mosul resident told the news agency. "Yesterday, the city felt like hell, today it could be the same or worse."
An official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan told the Associated Press that attackers in Mosul included escapees from Fallujah. He also told the news service that internal security forces "are a failure and are ineffective because some of them are cooperating with the terrorists."
In Baghdad, a massive car bomb at an intersection in a commercial area went off shortly before noon local time. U.S. officials said 30 civilians were wounded, 11 vehicles were destroyed and a building collapsed, trapping people inside.
AP reported that local Iraqi police put the death toll at 17. A U.S. military spokeswoman said there were no U.S. casualties in the explosion.
"The viciousness of this terrorist has no bounds," Lt. Col. James Hutton, spokesman for the 1st Cavalry Division, said in a statement.
Other attacks in Iraq Thursday included a car bombing that unsuccessfully targeted the governor of Kirkuk and wounded four of his bodyguards, according to the Arab TV channel al-Jazeera. The channel also reported that about 30 armed men attacked an Iraqi national guard station in Baquba, killing one guardsman and wounding three others.
Al-Jazeera television aired a videotape showing what the station said was an American contractor of Lebanese origin held hostage in Iraq. The man carried a U.S. passport and an identification card in the name of Dean Sadek. Al-Jazeera did not air any audio but quoted Sadek as saying all businesses should stop cooperating with U.S. authorities, the AP reported.
The fight against insurgents who have been operating for months from Fallujah is seen as important in preparing for January elections in Iraq. Fallujah is a stronghold for Sunni Muslims who dominated the former government of Saddam Hussein over the larger contingent of Shiite Muslims.
The BBC reported that its correspondents embedded with troops in Fallujah described U.S.-led forces attempting to pin the insurgents to the Euphrates River on the city's western side. Marines in the central part of the city called in four air strikes when they came under heavy fire, the BBC reported, and troops had pulled back from a hospital taken Sunday night.
While searching a two-story house in the northwestern part of the city, the 3rd Battalion 5th Marines found an Iraqi man who had been kidnapped. The basement of the house contained detention cells and extensive videotaping equipment, computers and cameras. A Fox News reporter embedded with a different company said that unit found five bodies in a locked house, each victim shot in the back of the head.
Ayad Allawi, Iraq's U.S.-backed interim prime minister, approved the assault on Fallujah. One of Allawi's cousins and two of his family members were kidnapped Tuesday in Baghdad.
As some U.S. forces pushed further into Fallujah, a city known for its many mosques, others took control of weapons caches and moved slowly to secure areas they penetrated earlier. Many civilians left Fallujah when U.S. planes began attacks against insurgents to soften the city before the ground invasion began Monday. For those who remained behind, a curfew has kept nearly all of them off the streets.
In the Jolan neighborhood of northern Fallujah, the 3rd Battalion 5th Marines, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., moved through the hot, dry air to set off booby traps and check buildings in an area that was once the insurgents' nerve center.
They also set up a forward command post.
The state of Iraqi civilians in Fallujah was unclear. Military jamming prevents mobile phone communication in order to disrupt coordination efforts by insurgents. There is little or no electricity.
Myers said on ABC's "Good Morning, America" that "the best we know, there have been hardly any, if any, civilian casualties so far."
A spokeswoman for the Red Crescent humanitarian organization told the BBC that physicians were unable to reach most Iraqi casualties in Fallujah and there was virtually no medical equipment. She called Fallujah a "disaster."
Myers and other U.S. officials have said humanitarian assistance is ready for Iraqis in Fallujah once insurgents are subdued.
Margaret Coker reported from Fallujah and George Edmonson reported from Washington.
Coker's e-mail address is mcoker(at)coxnews and Edmonson's is gedmonson(at)coxnews.com
ENDIT
Story Filed By Cox Newspapers
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NYT-11-11-04 2053EST
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