Tags:
Journalism of Courage
US warplanes bombarded hardcore rebel areas of Falluja on Monday as troops hunted insurgents house-to-house in the city already devastated by the ferocity of the military’s seven-day onslaught.
The US Military says it has taken control of Falluja, but scattered resistance remained, particularly in southern parts of the city.
Violence that has surged across Iraq’s Sunni Muslim region since the US offensive was launched, hit Mosul in the north for the fifth day, while there was heavy fighting in Baquba near Baghdad, where US jets dropped 500-pound bombs. Rebels also set fire to oil wells and a pumping station across the north. The US Marine general who commanded the fight to take Falluja, said those who remained were the hardcore rebels, who would be killed. There was no aid crisis in the city, he said.
US commanders say they are working to deliver assistance to the city themselves and urged any Iraqis needing aid to go to Falluja’s main hospital on the western outskirts.
Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said he did not believe any civilians were killed in the offensive, which has left 38 US soldiers, 6 Iraqi troops and more than 1,200 insurgents dead. But witness accounts contradicted him. A member of an Iraqi relief committee said he saw 22 bodies buried in rubble in Falluja’s northern Jolan district on Sunday.
Two US soldiers were wounded in a car bomb attack on a convoy on the highway leading west from the city. ‘‘I expect the next few days will bring some hard fighting,’’ US Commander Brigadier General Carter Ham said in an e-mail. ‘‘The situation in Mosul is tense, but certainly not desperate.’’ There were heavy clashes in Baquba, about 65 km north of Baghdad, in which 20 insurgents were killed and four US soldiers wounded, US Military said.
An oil storage tank at a pumping station on the main export pipeline to Turkey—a major artery of Iraq’s oil network—was blown up by insurgents. —Reuters
