FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces found themselves fighting in Baghdad, Mosul, Baqouba and other regions on Monday while in Fallujah die-hard insurgents held out to the last in the week-long battle.
“What you’re seeing now are some of the hard-liners, they seem to be better equipped than some of the earlier ones; we’ve seen flak jackets on some of them,” Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski told the BBC from Fallujah. “I think they’re probably willing to lay down their lives in the fight. But we’re more determined and we’re going to wipe them out.”
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Monday that the leader and other members of Jaish Mohammed, a group responsible for some recent beheadings, had been captured in Fallujah. The group was known to have cooperated with Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and al-Qaida, Allawi said.
In an audiotape that surfaced Monday on an extremist Web site, a man identifying himself as al-Zarqawi told insurgents outside Fallujah to prepare for battle. “The enemy ... has massed its capabilities ... to finish off Islam in Fallujah," he said. "If it finishes Fallujah, it will move in your direction.”
The speaker said the Americans were overextended and “cannot expand” their operations.
“Shower them with rockets and mortars and cut all the supply routes,” he urged.
Baqouba, Mosul clashes
In Baqouba, meanwhile, witnesses said insurgents were fighting U.S. troops and Iraqi police, and explosions and heavy gunfire were heard — the latest in a wave of clashes that has swept Iraq’s Sunni Muslim heartland.
U.S. warplanes also dropped two 500-pound bombs on insurgents positions in Baqouba, killing at least 20, the military said.
Firefights also erupted just south of Baqouba in the town of Buhriz, as insurgents attacked some police stations and a nearby U.S. base, residents said. The two cities are located about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
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Today showIn Mosul, where an uprising broke out last week in support of the Fallujah defenders, militants raided two police stations, killing at least six Iraqi National Guards and wounding three others. One insurgent was killed and three others were wounded before Iraqi security forces regained control of both stations, witnesses said.
Insurgents also set fire to the Mosul governor’s house, destroying it and damaging his car.
Two U.S. soldiers were wounded in a car bomb attack on a convoy on the highway leading west from the city of two million.
“I expect the next few days will bring some hard fighting,” U.S. northern commander Brigadier General Carter Ham said in a statement. “The situation in Mosul is tense, but certainly not desperate.”
Iraq’s Red Crescent group sent seven truckloads of food and medicine to the city, but U.S. forces blocked the aid convoy, saying the city was not yet safe.
* Marines on Sunday found the mutilated body of a Western woman as they searched for militants still holding out in Fallujah. The woman could not be immediately identified, but Margaret Hassan, director of CARE international in Iraq, and Teresa Borcz Khalifa, a Polish-born longtime resident of Iraq, are the only Western women known to have been taken hostage. The disemboweled body of the woman was wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket on a street.
* Clashes between gunmen and Iraqi security forces early Monday south of Baghdad killed seven Iraqi police and national guardsmen and injured five others, police said. Before the clashes, National Guardsmen opened fire at a boobytrapped car approaching their headquarters, killing the driver. The car was loaded with 880 pounds of TNT.
* In the insurgent-heavy city of Ramadi, 70 miles west of the capital, heavy fighting erupted on Monday between militants and U.S. forces, residents said.
* North of Ramadi, a U.S. convoy came under attack near the town of Baghdadi, with one Humvee destroyed, according to a Baghdadi police Lt. Mohammed Abdel Karim. There was no confirmation from the U.S. military about the incident.
* In Beiji, the site of Iraq’s biggest oil refinery, U.S. soldiers responded to gunfire with tank rounds and Hellfire missiles, the U.S. military said. At least six people were killed and 20 wounded, according to witnesses.
* Saboteurs set fire Sunday to four oil wells in Iraq’s northern fields, setting off successive explosions in Khabbaza, 12 miles northwest of Kirkuk, oil officials said.
Factories of death
Marines in Fallujah on Sunday showed off what they called a bomb-making factory, where insurgents prepared roadside explosives and car bombs that have killed hundreds of Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops.
Wires, cell phones, Motorola handheld radios and a Plastic foam box packed with C4 plastic explosives sat in the dark building down an alley, along with three balaclava-style masks reading: “There is only one god, Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.”
So far U.S. troops have only found two hostages, one Iraqi and one Syrian.
Those trapped inside the city, whose population was put at about 300,000 before the offensive but has fallen to around 60,000 according to some estimates, say they are reaching a point of desperation. |
