U.S. forces hold 70 percent of Fallujah

By Edward Harris
The Associated Press

LUIS SINCO / AP A member of Charlie Company of the U.S. Marines First Division, Eighth Regiment, takes a break from fierce fighting yesterday in Fallujah. U.S. forces reached the center of the insurgent stronghold, battling bands of guerrillas in the streets and searching them out house to house.

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The abandoned houses in northern Fallujah had hostages' documents, CDs showing captives being killed, and black clothing worn by militants in videos, Maj. Gen. Abdul Qader Mohammed Jassem Mohan said.

But it appeared troops did not find any of the at least nine foreigners still in kidnappers' hands — including two Americans. "We have found hostage slaughterhouses in Fallujah that were used by these people," Mohan said. But he said he did not know which hostages' documents were uncovered.

The speed of the U.S. drive in Fallujah may indicate that most Sunni fighters and their leaders abandoned the city before the offensive and moved elsewhere to carry on the fight, U.S. officers said. The most notorious kidnapper, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is believed to have fled the city.

Mohan, the commander of Iraqi troops in Fallujah, said fighters are still trying to escape the tight encirclement. He said people were seen earlier trying to slip away by swimming across the Euphrates River.

Guerrillas accelerated attacks outside Fallujah in an attempt to open up new fronts to divert U.S.-Iraqi forces, with at least 28 people killed in violence across the country today — including 10 people killed when a car bomb targeted a police patrol in Baghdad after sunset.

Gunmen also kidnapped three relatives of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi from their Baghdad home — his cousin, Ghazi Allawi, the cousin's wife and their daughter-in-law, Allawi's spokesman said. A militant group calling itself Ansar al-Jihad claimed in a Web posting to be holding them threatened to behead them in 48 hours unless the Fallujah siege is lifted. The claim's authenticity could not be verified.

Also, Al-Jazeera television broadcast a videotape today with a militant group claiming to have captured 20 Iraqi soldiers in Fallujah. Men wearing Iraqi National Guard uniforms were shown with their backs to the camera.

The station said a masked militant reading a statement on the tape promised not to kill the prisoners shown but threatened to kill others captured in the future.

In northern Iraq, authorities clamped a curfew on the city of Mosul as U.S. and Iraqi forces clashed with gunmen there. Fierce fighting also took place in and around Baghdad and in Ramadi, a Sunni stronghold where explosions shook the city as U.S. troops and gunmen battled near the main government building. One U.S. soldier was killed by a bomb north of the capital.

Still, U.S. and Iraqi troops were pushing ahead in Fallujah. Marine commander Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler said insurgents had been reduced to "small pockets, blind, moving throughout the city. And we will continue to hunt them down and destroy them."

Mohan vowed to finish uprooting the gunmen and pointed to guerrilla slayings of Iraqi security forces in the past.

"For this, the Iraqi armed forces don't want revenge, but they want to get rid of insurgents, the evil, the murderers," he told a press conference alongside Sattler.

Some fighters have sought to surrender, government spokesman Thair al-Naqeeb told reporters, offering an amnesty to those who have not committed "major crimes."

Maj. Francis Piccoli, of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force led by Sattler, said U.S. forces now control 70 percent of the city. At least 71 militants have been killed by early today, the third day of intense urban combat, the military said. As of Tuesday night, 10 U.S. troops and two members of the Iraqi security forces had been killed. Marine reports today said 25 American troops and 16 Iraqi soldiers were wounded.

U.S. and Iraqi forces seized Fallujah's city hall compound before dawn after a gunbattle with insurgents who hit a U.S. tanks with anti-armor rockets. Iraqi soldiers swept into a police station in the compound and raised a flag above it.

Gunmen fired on troops from a mosque minaret, BBC's embedded correspondent Paul Wood reported. Marines said the insurgents waved a white flag at one stage but then opened fire, prompting the Marines to call in airstrikes, Wood said.

Tank gunners opened fire on insurgents in a nearby five-story apartment building, and flames shot from several windows of the building.

Residents reported heavy clashes and artillery shelling in the Jolan and Jumhuriya neighborhood, along the central highway, where witnesses said dead bodies lay in the streets.

Residents said they were running out of food in a city that had its electricity cut two days ago.

Most insurgents likely fled before the assault began so they could fight elsewhere, officers said today. Iraqi and U.S. commanders had been warning for weeks that they would invade Fallujah to re-establish government control.

"That's probably why we've been able to move as fast as we have," said one officer from the Army's 1st Cavalry Division, who asked not to be named.

About 100 men, women and children made their way to American positions in the south of the city and gave themselves up today, an officer from the Army's 1st Cavalry Division said.

Most of Fallujah's 200,000 to 300,000 residents are believed to have fled the city before the U.S. assault. Civilian casualties in the attack are not known, though U.S. commanders insist they are low.

The U.S. advance in Fallujah was more rapid than in an offensive in April, when insurgents fought a force of fewer than 2,000 Marines to a standstill in a three-week siege. This time, the U.S. military has sent up to 15,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops into the battle, backed by tanks, artillery and attack aircraft.

If reports that most gunmen fled the city are true, it indicates that while the new offensive may cost the insurgency its strongest bastion, the fighters will seek to continue their campaign of violence elsewhere.

In Mosul, the curfew came after a series of clashes including two attacks against American military convoys, U.S. Capt. Angela Bowman said. A foreign contractor was killed in one of the attacks, Bowman said, without giving details. Three Iraqi policemen and an Iraqi National Guard soldier were killed, hospital and security officials said.

In Baghdad — where Allawi this week imposed a nighttime curfew for the first time in a year — a car bomb exploded on a crowded street, targeting a police patrol in the eastern Zaytouna neighborhood. Ten people were killed and 15 others wounded, police officer Qahtan Jumaygh said.

Six people were killed and four others wounded during clashes in Latifiyah, south of Baghdad. A bomb killed six Iraqi soldiers in northern Iraq.

A U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad today. The military also announced that a U.S. soldiers was killed by a gun attack on a patrol in Baghdad on Tuesday.

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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Jim Krane near Fallujah; and Tini Tran, Sameer N. Yacoub, Mariam Fam, Sabah Jerges, Katarina Kratovac and Maggie Michael in Baghdad

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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