U.S. FORCES CLAIM CONTROL OF 70 PERCENT OF FALLUJAH

 

  Informe de  EDWARD HARRIS  en “The Washington Post” del 10/11/2004

 

Por su interés y relevancia, he seleccionado el artículo que sigue para incluirlo en este sitio web. (L. B.-B.)

 

 

NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq -- American forces battled through boobytrapped lanes and alleys Wednesday in a stunningly swift advance, taking control of 70 percent of Fallujah and bottling up enemy fighters along a strip of territory flanking the main east-west highway that bisects the rebel bastion.

The military said at least 71 militants had been killed as of the beginning of the third day of intense urban combat, with the casualty figure expected to rise sharply once U.S. forces account for insurgents killed in airstrikes.

As of Tuesday night, 10 U.S. troops and two members of the Iraqi security force had been killed, a toll that already equaled the number of American troops who died when Marines besieged the city for three weeks in April.

Major Francis Piccoli, of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, characterized fighting overnight as "light to moderate" and said U.S. casualties were "extremely light."

Piccoli said U.S. forces that pushed south through Fallujah's central highway overnight now control 70 percent of the city, with the remaining insurgents in a strip along the main east-west highway.

"There's going to be a movement today in those areas. The heart of the city is what's in focus now," he said.

The northwestern neighborhood of Jolan, the historic warren of crooked streets where Sunni militants and foreign fighters had rigged boobytraps, was now "secured and under control," he said, although Marines were expected to continue house-to-house searches for fighters and weapons.

Marine reports Wednesday said 25 American troops and 16 Iraqi soldiers were wounded.

Also Wednesday, one U.S. soldier was killed and a second was wounded by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad. In northern Iraq, six Iraqi soldiers died and two were wounded when a roadside bomb detonated near an Iraqi military camp.

Earlier, as many as eight attack aircraft -- including jets and helicopter gunships -- blasted guerrilla strongholds and raked the streets with rocket, cannon and machine-gun fire ahead of U.S. and Iraqi infantry as they advanced just a block or two behind the curtain of fire.

Small groups of guerrillas, armed with rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and machine guns, had engaged U.S. troops, then fell back. U.S. troops inspected houses along Fallujah's streets and ran across adjoining alleyways, mindful of snipers.

Despite resistance being lighter than expected the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Tuesday he still expected "several more days of tough urban fighting" as insurgents fell back toward the southern end of the city, perhaps for a last stand.

"I'm surprised how quickly (resistance) broke and how quickly they ran away, a force of foreign fighters who were supposed to fight to the death," Lt. Col. Pete Newell, a battalion commander in the 1st Infantry Division, told CNN.

Prime Minister Ayad Allawi declared a nighttime curfew in Baghdad and its surroundings -- the first in the capital for a year -- to prevent insurgents from opening up a "second front" to try to draw American forces away from Fallujah. Clashes erupted in the northern city of Mosul and near the Sunni bastion of Ramadi, explosions were reported in at least two cities and masked militants brandished weapons and warned merchants to close their shops.

In Fallujah, U.S. troops were advanced more rapidly than in April, when insurgents fought a force of fewer than 2,000 Marines to a standstill in a three-week siege. It ended with the Americans handing over the city to a local force, which lost control to Islamic militants.

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.

"The enemy is fighting hard but not to the death," Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the multinational ground force commander in Iraq, told a Pentagon news conference relayed by video from Iraq. "There is not a sense that he is staying in particular places. He is continuing to fall back or he dies in those positions."

Metz said Iraqi soldiers searched several mosques Tuesday and found "lots of munitions and weapons."

Although capturing or killing the senior insurgent leadership is a goal of the operation, Metz said he believed the most wanted man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had escaped Fallujah.

It was unclear how many insurgents stayed in the city for the fight, given months of warnings by U.S. officials and Iraqis that a confrontation was in the offing.

Metz said troops have captured a very small number of insurgent fighters and "imposed significant casualties against the enemy."

Before the major ground assault that began Monday night, the U.S. military reported 42 insurgents killed. Fallujah doctors reported 12 people dead. Since then, there has been no specific information on Iraqi death tolls.

The latest American deaths included two killed by mortars near Mosul and 11 others who died Monday, most of them as guerrillas launched a wave of attacks in Baghdad and southwest of Fallujah. It was unclear how many of those died in the Fallujah offensive, but the 11 deaths were among the highest for a single day since last spring.

U.S. officials said few people were attempting to flee the city, either because most civilians had already left or because they were complying with a round-the-clock curfew. A funeral procession, however, was allowed to leave, officials said.

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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Robert Burns in Washington; Edward Harris in Fallujah; and Tini Tran, Mariam Fam, Katarina Kratovac and Maggie Michael in Baghdad.