Inclusion (BBC and CNN)

Key

Inclusion
Inclusion (Aljazeera and BBC)

Inclusion (BBC and CNN)

Common Ground

Aljazeera.net (English)

Fierce fighting in Falluja

Friday 12 November 2004, 20:14 Makka Time, 17:14 GMT

The US-led assault on Falluja hasentered its fourth day even asthe city's resistance fighters appeared to be taking the battle against US forces tothe country's north.

A fierce battle erupted between US forces and Fallujan resistance fighters near a mosque in Falluja's Jolan district on Friday, a Reuters correspondent said.

The sound of machine-gun fire and grenade explosions echoed across the Jolan district and several fighters were seen on a rooftop beside a mosque.

US soldiers said battles were becomingmore intense as fighters were trapped in the city.

"It's extremely dangerous right now because the insurgents have nowhere to go, they are just sitting in houses waiting for us to come in,"US marine Corporal Will Porter said.

"I'm supposed to shoot into the houses before our troops go in."

Dire humanitarian situation

Falluja residents reported a dire humanitarian situation.

Rasul Ibrahim, a father of three, fled Falluja on foot on Thursday morning and arrived with his wife and children in Habbaniya, about 20km to the west, at night.

He said families left in the city were in desperate need.

"There's no water. People are drinking dirty water. Children are dying. People are eating flour because there's no proper food," he told aid workers in Habbaniya, which has become a refugee camp, with around 2000 families sheltering there.

'Massacre'

Speaking to Aljazeera, a doctor in Falluja gave an emotional plea for an end to the fighting.

"I'm one of the few medical cadres that survived last Monday from the massacre," said Dr. Abbas Ali.

"We are in a very tragic situation. Hundreds of dead bodies are spread in the streets. Even the injured are still there. We can not transfer them. We can not do anything to save them.

"We call on all organizations and the whole world to help us.

"The US forces have asked us through loudspeakers to get out [of the houses] and raise white flags. But all the city's areas are under fierce bombings.

"We don't know what to do, stay in our place which is under bombardment or get out and get shot," Ali said.

'Big disaster'

The Iraqi Red Crescent Society urged US forces and the Iraqi government to let it deliver food, medicine and water to Falluja, describing conditions there as a "big disaster".

"We call on the Iraqi government and US forces to allow us to do our humanitarian duty to the innocent people," said Red Crescent spokeswoman Firdus al-Ubadi.

"This is their responsibility," she said, adding that judging by reports received from refugees and pictures broadcast on television, Falluja was a "big disaster".

A US military spokesman said the Red Crescent had permission to help the many civilians who have fled Falluja, but could not say if it had been granted access to the city itself.

Air strikes on Mosul

Elsewhere in Iraqviolence flared in the north and in Baghdad.

US forces have launched air strikes on Mosul targeting fighterswho have attacked police stations and fought fierce street battles this week, the US military said on Friday.

"We have targeted known concentrations of terrorists in specific areas of the city," said Captain Angela Bowman, a spokeswoman for US forces based in the city.

The strikes come as violence flared in northern Iraq with observers saying fighters had arrived in the area after feeling Falluja.

On Friday, armed men assassinated a senior police officer in Mosul,Muaffaq Muhammad Daham, and burnt his house down.

A total of nine police stations had been attacked over the last two days, according to a US military spokeswoman.

Baghdad fighting

Three police checkpoints were attacked on Friday and set ablaze along the road linking Iraq's northern oil city of Kirkuk with Tikrit.

Assailants beat up the police at the checkpoints and took their weapons before fleeing the scene, said police colonel Arkan Hamad from Kirkuk.

Separately, police killed one fighter and captured three others following clashes against the police and national guards Baquba, 60km (36 miles) northeast of the Iraqi capital, police said.

In Baghdad, machinegun fire and grenade blasts echoed across the Iraqi capital on Friday as anti-US fighters clashed with Iraqi national guards, witnesses said.

There was no word on casualties in the fighting in the mainly Sunni Muslim Adhamiya district.

Fighters also clashed with US troops in the Abu Ghraib area on Baghdad's western outskirts, residents said.

BBC News

US 'cornering' Falluja insurgents

US commanders say they are trying to trap insurgents in Falluja against the River Euphrates in the southern part of the Iraqi city.

The American-led assault on the city is in its fifth day.

A BBC correspondent in the city centre says US marines are still under sniper attack at their main base.

Militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has allegedly urged rebels to resist US forces in Falluja in a recording posted on an Islamist website.

US troops say they have trapped fighters loyal to al-Zarqawi in the south of Falluja but the recording assures insurgents that victory is near.

'Enemy sanctuary'

The BBC's correspondent in Falluja says the insurgents are increasingly confined to a narrow corridor south of the main road through the city.

Lt Col Gareth Brandl of the US marines told our correspondent that the gradual driving back of the insurgents was working.

"We are here to reduce the enemy sanctuary, we're doing that. We are crushing his back, one vertebrae at a time."

Embedded with US forces and subject to reporting restrictions, the BBC's Paul Wood says there is no sign of any civilians and the plight of those trapped by the fighting can only be guessed at.

US forces estimate they have killed about 600 insurgents since the assault began on Monday. They say 18 Americans have been killed and almost 180 wounded.

In other developments in Iraq:

• A US Blackhawk helicopter is shot down north of Baghdad, wounding three crew members
• Insurgents shoot dead an American soldier after attacking a US patrol in southern Baghdad; clashes continue in other parts of the capital
• The US launches air strikes against targets in Mosul after fierce battles with insurgents
• In Falluja, US forces say they have found alive the Syrian driver who was kidnapped with two French journalists in Iraq almost three months ago. There is no information on the Frenchmen.

Trapped

Master Sergeant Roy Meek of the US marines said the insurgents were cornered in the south of the city.

"They can't go north because that's where we are. They can't go west because of the Euphrates river and they can't go east because we have a huge presence there."

US Corporal Will Porter said he was charged with clearing insurgents from one house at a time.

"It's extremely dangerous right now because the insurgents have nowhere to go, they are just sitting in houses waiting for us to come in," he said.

US officials nearly doubled their tally of wounded on Friday, and bed capacity is reportedly being expanded at the main US military hospital in Europe - at Landstuhl in Germany - to cope with an influx of injured marines.

Some 10,000 US forces and 2,000 Iraqi troops are involved in the battle for Falluja.

The Iraqi Red Crescent said the humanitarian situation in Falluja was a "disaster".

"Anyone who gets injured is likely to die because there's no medicine and they can't get to doctors," said Abdul-Hameed Salim, a volunteer.

Residents trapped in the battered city said they could smell the stench of decomposing bodies.

Rasoul Ibrahim, who fled Falluja on foot with his wife and three children on Thursday, said conditions there were desperate.

"There's no water. People are drinking dirty water. Children are dying. People are eating flour because there's no proper food," he said.

CNN

Fighting flares in 4 Iraqi cities

U.S. troops push into south Falluja

Friday, November 12, 2004 Posted: 12:25 PM EST (1725 GMT)

FALLUJA, Iraq (CNN) -- As U.S. soldiers advanced into southern Falluja on Friday, violence and combat intensified across Iraq with battles flaring in Mosul, Baquba and Baghdad.

Adding firepower to an offensive that began Thursday, U.S. airstrikes hit a cemetery in southwestern Mosul on Friday.

The targets were insurgents who carried out attacks on government facilities and Iraqi forces in the northern Iraqi city earlier in the week, said Capt. Angela Bowman of Task Force Olympia.

Iraqi National Guard forces and soldiers from the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, or Stryker Brigade Combat Team launched the offensive Thursday at the request of the governor of Nineveh province, where Mosul is located.

A U.S. soldier was killed by small arms fire during the offensive, a military statement said. The soldier was assigned to Task Force Olympia. No other details were immediately available.

Clashes also erupted in al-Bakr neighborhood, a Kurdish neighborhood, between Patriotic Union of Kurdistan members and insurgents, who tried to take over a PUK building.

The violence across Iraq comes as the imam of the Abu Hanifa mosque in al-Adamiyah called for a jihad against U.S. forces and the interim government during Friday's noon prayers.

In Baquba, a Sunni Triangle city northeast of Baghdad, insurgents and Iraqi police forces battled early Friday afternoon near the al-Sharif cemetery.

Two Iraqi police and two Iraqi civilians, both of whom are women, were wounded, a hospital official said. An official from the Baquba hospital adds that both women are in critical condition. Baquba is in Diyala province.

Attacks in Baghdad

In Baghdad, one soldier died and three other people were wounded when a Task Force Baghdad patrol was ambushed Friday afternoon in the southern section of the city.

Northeast of the capital, insurgents shot down a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter Friday afternoon, the U.S. military said.

"Four multinational forces were on board the aircraft at the time. Three of them were wounded, but injuries are unknown at this time," the military said in a statement.

And the al-Adamiyah neighborhood in the northern part of Baghdad saw insurgents attack an Iraqi police station and Iraqi police patrols on Friday, according to Iraqi police.

The insurgents used small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. There were no reports of casualties.

Troops push into southern Falluja

U.S. troops fought small cells of insurgents in alleyways and bombed-out buildings as the all-out assault on the Sunni Triangle flashpoint city of Falluja entered its fifth day.

CNN's Jane Arraf, who is embedded with the Army, reported Friday the soldiers are clearing the way for Marines, who are going door-to-door in an effort to find weapons caches and secure the area.

"They have essentially taken the south," Arraf said.

U.S. forces hope to take over the last rebel bastion in southern Falluja during the night, a U.S. Marine officer told Reuters news agency on Friday.

Tank company Capt. Robert Bodisch also told Reuters dozens of insurgents had been killed or captured in the south Falluja stronghold.

Eighteen U.S. troops and five Iraqi soldiers have died in the Falluja operation, Marine commander Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski said Thursday. In addition, the CombinedPressInformationCenter said 178 U.S. service members and 34 Iraqis have been wounded in the operation.

Dozens of wounded troops are being airlifted to LandstuhlRegionalMedicalCenter in Germany.

The army unit cleared an industrial section of Falluja "where they found at almost every turn buildings wired to explode, bombs in the making, anti-tank mines, weapons lying around," Arraf reported. "The whole place was an arms cache."

The U.S. military has pounded the industrial area with airstrikes, wire-guided missiles and artillery fire to wipe out most large bands of insurgents.

"There isn't a block where there hasn't been a building that has been flattened, a tank round through it or a bomb dropped on it," Arraf reported.

Small cells of three to five men continue to fire at the soldiers and hide in the urban area.

Fighting raged through the night, with light flickering in the night sky amid artillery and tank fire.

An Iraqi Intervention Forces company commander, working with the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division, said Friday the mission is meeting less resistance than expected, noting foreign fighters have been found among the bodies of insurgents killed in the fighting.

A spokesman for Iraq's interim prime minister Friday said a number of foreign fighters were detained in Falluja fighting.

They include 10 from Iran, one from Egypt, one from Sudan, one from Saudi Arabia and one from Jordan, according to Thair al Nakib.

As of Thursday, the Pentagon said, more than 500 insurgents have been killed in the Falluja offensive.

Earlier, U.S. and Iraqi forces seized the mayor's office, other government offices, and several mosques and bridges in their push to retake the city from insurgents, military officials said.

Operation New Dawn -- intended to pacify the city ahead of the scheduled January elections for a transitional national assembly -- got going Sunday night with the seizure of a hospital and the securing of two bridges over the EuphratesRiver.

But the actual offensive began in earnest Monday when 10,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines, aided by 2,000 troops from Iraq's new army, stormed Falluja.

Falluja was considered an insurgent command-and-control center for the rest of the country and a base for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror network.

Other developments

 The Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera aired video Thursday of what it said was a middle-aged Lebanese-American contractor abducted in Iraq. The network did not air audio from the hostage, who it said was identified in the video as Dean Sadek Mohammad Sadek. It said he appealed to all contractors not to work with his company, SkyLink Air and Logistic Support, a U.S.--based company that has helped to reopen and manage Iraqi airports. According to Al-Jazeera, a militant group known as the Revolution of the 20th took him hostage.

 U.S. troops seized a weapons cache in a western Baghdad mosque, the military reported Friday. Twenty-three suspected insurgents and three Muslim clerics were detained. Two U.S. soldiers were wounded by sniper fire during the operation and were evacuated for treatment.