U.S. forces reach center of Fallujah
14 Americans killed in fighting over 2 days in city, elsewhere

NBC, MSNBC and news services
Updated: 115 a.m. ET Nov. 9, 2004FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. Army troops, Marines and some Iraqi forces punched their way through and past the center of Fallujah on Tuesday, but at least 3 U.S. soldiers lost their lives and more were wounded in battles with Sunni extremists.

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The fighting in the city and elsewhere in Iraq has cost the United States at least 14 lives over the past two days, according to Pentagon figures. Eleven died on Monday, most in attacks outside Fallujah, marking the highest one-day U.S. toll in more than six months.

Outside Fallujah, meanwhile, insurgents kept up attacks on Tuesday. Raids on police stations in and around the city of Baqouba reportedly killed 45 people, most of them police. The attack was claimed by the terror group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to an Islamic Web site.

Iraqi authorities later imposed the first nighttime curfew in more than a year on Baghdad and surrounding areas under powers granted by an emergency decree announced last weekend.

Hundreds of guerrillas were also swarming the streets of Ramadi, another insurgent stronghold 70 miles west of Baghdad. Gunfire rang out in the city center, and a destroyed car smeared with blood was seen.

Warren of alleyways
In Fallujah, U.S. troops found lighter-than-expected resistance in the Jolan neighborhood, according to NBC's Kevin Sites, who is with one Marine contingent. Sunni extremists were thought to be holed up in Jolan, a warren of alleyways in northeastern Fallujah where the assault began. FREE VIDEO


But heavy street clashes were raging in other northern sectors of Fallujah amid fierce bursts of gunfire, residents said. At least two American tanks were engulfed in flames, witnesses said.

Small bands of guerrillas — fewer than 20 — were engaging U.S. troops, then falling back in the face of overwhelming fire from American tanks, 20mm cannons and heavy machine guns, said Time magazine reporter Michael Ware, embedded with troops. Ware reported that there appeared to be no civilians in the area he was in.

On one thoroughfare in the city, U.S. troops traded fire with gunmen holed up in a row of houses about 100 yards away. An American gunner on an armored vehicle let loose with his machinegun, grinding the upper part of a small building to rubble.

Lt. Col. John Morris said U.S. Marines were spearheading the advance while Iraqi forces would seize weapons and fight insurgents in streets and alleys.

“This will be a challenging task,” he said, adding that insurgents had booby-trapped entire buildings.

The U.S. military said three troops had been killed and another 14 wounded in and around Fallujah during the past 12 hours. On Monday, two Marines were killed when their bulldozer flipped over into the Euphrates near Fallujah.

But a wounded U.S. soldier told a Reuters reporter Tuesday that he had seen 50 wounded comrades. “A buddy of mine and another soldier were killed and I have seen about 50 other wounded (U.S.) soldiers since the fighting began,” he said while awaiting medical evacuation from the city. He declined to give his name.

A U.S. military ambulance driver also said he had witnessed many casualties.

Center reached, mosque surrounded
By midday local time, U.S. armored units had made their way to the central highway in the heart of the city, crossing over into the southern part of Fallujah, a major milestone.

Machine gun fire crackled from the eastern and central parts of the city and black smoke rose from near a mosque.

The once-constant thunder of artillery barrages has been halted with so many troops moving inside the city’s narrow alleys.

Col. Michael Formica, commander of the 1st Cavalry Brigade, said a security cordon around the city will be tightened to ensure insurgents dressed in civilian clothing don’t slip out.

By nightfall, a civilian living in the center of Fallujah said hundreds of houses had been destroyed. “Every minute, hundreds of bombs and shells are exploding,” said Fadril al-Badrani, a resident who lives in the center of Fallujah, said after nightfall Monday. “The north of the city is in flames. I can also see fire and smoke ... Fallujah has become like hell.”

U.S. military spokesman estimated that 42 insurgents were killed across the city in bombardment and skirmishes before the main assault began Monday.

As they entered Fallujah, U.S. troops cut off electricity to the city, and most private generators were not working — either because their owners wanted to conserve fuel or the wires had been damaged by explosions.

Residents said they were without running water and were worried about food shortages because most shops in the city have been closed for the past two days.

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'We are not here to liberate Iraq, we're here to fight the infidels'

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In the front yard of a half-built house in Falluja, a dozen fighters sat in a semicircle. With Kalashnikovs in their laps and copies of the Qur'an in their hands, they stared at us suspiciously.
The silence was punctuated by the sound of mortar shelling. With each explosion, the fighters would cry, "Allahu Akbar".

Eventually, the mujahideen started talking: "Who are you?" "What do you do?" "Why the big cameras?"

But mostly they were interested only in converting us to Islam. They were still describing the pains I would go through in hell when another fighter, a short thin teenager, appeared. He was still dressed in his white pyjamas and rubbed his eyes as he listened to the conversation.

"What are you doing?" he asked one of the fighters.

"We are preaching to them about Islam," said the fighter.

"Why? They are not Muslims?"

"No."

The young man looked with puzzlement at the other fighter and said: "But then, why don't we kill them?"

"We can't do that now. They are in a state of truce with us," the fighter said.

The fighters belonged to Tawhid and Jihad, the group that has claimed responsibility for most of the violence sweeping Iraq. Eradicating these men is one of the prime objectives of the US offensive on Falluja.

At first sight, they all looked and behaved the same; young men in trainers and tracksuits preaching Islam. As time passed, they became more relaxed and open about who they were and why they were there.

It became apparent that they were an odd bunch of people from different places and with different dreams.

There were two kinds of mujahideen bound together in a marriage of convenience. One kind, Arab fighters from the new generation of the jihad diaspora, were teachers, workers and students from across the Arab world feeling oppressed and alienated by the west; they came to Iraq with dreams of martyrdom.

The other kind, Iraqi fighters from Falluja, were fighting the army that occupied their country.

They were five Saudis - or the people of the peninsula, as they called themselves - three Tunisians and one Yemeni. The rest were Iraqis.

Most of the time, when they weren't reading or praying, they spoke about death, not fearfully, but in happy anticipation. They talked about how martyrs would not feel pain and about how many virgins they would get in heaven.

I asked one of them, a young teacher from Saudi Arabia, why he was there. He started reading the verses in the Qur'an that urge Muslims to commit jihad. He read about the importance of martyrdom. After 20 minutes, he directed me to another fighter, an older man with a beard and a soft voice who said his name was Abu Ossama from Tunisia.

"We are here for one of two things - victory or martyrdom, and both are great," he said.

"The most important thing is our religion, not Falluja and not the occupation. If the American solders came to me and converted to Islam, I won't fight them. We are here not because we want to liberate Iraq, we are here to fight the infidels and to make victorious the name of Islam."

He continued to explain his jihad theories: "They call us terrorists because we resist them. If defending the truth is terrorism, then we are terrorists."

Suddenly, there was a heavy burst of gunfire. The young Saudi teacher ran to fetch a machine gun. With ammunition belts wrapped around his neck, he and a young Tunisian carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher ran outside.

The Saudi reached a trench. Opening his Qur'an, he read for a while and then pointed his machine gun at the horizon, trying to release the safety catch.

He fiddled with the gun for a few minutes, then turned to me: "Do you know how to make these things work?"

Abu Yassir, a short, heavy-built, middle-aged Iraqi with a grey beard, was the "amir", or commander, of this group. He was a more experienced fighter and looked after the others.

When it was time to break their fast, the men poured food into a big tray and, exchanging jokes, scooped rice with their fingers. I had to keep reminding myself that these people blow up civilians every day in Iraq.

After the food, the amir told his story.

He was a retired military officer and ran a business making electric generators. He was happy to see the back of Saddam Hussein and to get rid of the Ba'athist regime.

But, he said, "as the time passed by and as the occupation became more visible, more patriotic feelings grew bigger and bigger. Every time I saw the Americans patrolling our streets I became more humiliated."

He described how locals from Falluja and other places started to organise themselves into small cells and to attack the Americans.

"We just wanted them to leave our cities. In the beginning I had a 'job' every month, setting IEDs [improvised explosive devices] or firing mortars, and would go back to my work most of the time. But then I realised I can't do any thing but jihad as long as the Americans occupied my country."

He closed his workshop, sold his business and used the money to sponsor the group of fighters.

"The world is convinced that we people of Falluja are happy to kill the innocents, that's not true, even when we execute collaborators and people working for the Americans, I feel sad for them and sometimes cry, but this is a war."

We slept in one of the many empty houses, but every few moments we heard the sound of an explosion. Suddenly, there was a huge blast. We ran outside.

The fighters were already in the street, shouting "Allahu Akbar" every time they heard explosions, believing it would divert the missiles away.

We walked in the darkness until we reached a mosque, were we spent the night listening to the heavy bombing and the shrapnel hitting the walls.

The next day, the mujahideen left the house where they had stayed for the last few days, believing they had been spotted by the Americans.

There they took their final fighting positions and designated one of them, a young Iraqi, as the unit's martyr - a fighter whose task is to explode himself next to the Americans.

The amir told me: "All we want is the Americans to leave, and then everything will be fine, the Kurds will stop talking about seceding from Iraq, the Shias will stop talking about settling scores with Sunnis and each province will elect a council and these councils will elect a president.

"That is the election we see democratic, not an American one."

But, he said: "We are besieged here now. It is a great emotional victory, but bad strategy. It is very easy now for the Americans to come and kill us all."

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Falluja rebels may lie low, strike back later

BAGHDAD, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Most hardcore Iraqi insurgents and foreign fighters are likely to have left Falluja to evade a U.S. offensive and fight again another day, Iraqi security officials and politicians said on Monday.

Battle-hardened fighters may still strike back, even if American and Iraqi forces retake the Sunni Muslim city, they said, pointing to a recent revival in attacks by insurgents after a U.S.-led offensive on the city of Samarra last month.

"We don't expect to find many of them in Falluja. They are fighting a guerrilla warfare of attack and retreat," Ahmed al-Khafaji, a senior Iraqi official involved in counter-insurgency efforts, told Reuters.

Khafaji said the offensive would deny Saddam Hussein loyalists a key operating base and make it harder for them to coordinate with foreign fighters he says have infiltrated Iraq.

"They operate in cells, but we will get them. They lack the cover of topography and mass support," said Khafaji, who fought in an anti-Saddam uprising after the 1991 Gulf War.

U.S. forces advanced to the edge of Falluja on Monday and launched air and artillery strikes before an offensive aimed at rooting out insurgents and followers of al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his followers said to be in the city.

Some American commanders are facing a tough fight with up to 6,000 insurgents in a city seen as the epicentre of suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings.

But Falluja residents said the number of gunmen in the city had dwindled in the past week. "They know better than to remain under heavy bombing," said one.

Khafaji said the insurgents are well-financed and able to recruit suicide bombers, who have mounted almost daily attacks on U.S. troops and fledgling Iraqi security forces.

UNSTOPPABLE THREAT

U.S. planes bombed an area north of Samarra on Monday, two days after insurgents mounted suicide bombings and attacks on police stations there that killed 34 people.

"There is a limit to what any country can do in face of suicide bombs. We cannot ban cars and people," Khafaji said, adding that the government was pressing neighbouring countries to stop supporting the insurgents and foreign fighters.

Neighbouring Syria denies U.S. and Iraqi charges that it lets fighters cross its border into Iraq. It said at the weekend it had agreed a border security pact with the Baghdad government.

Entifadh Qanbar, a spokesman for Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress party, said it was former senior officials of Saddam's Baath party who were driving the insurgency, not the foreign fighters they sometimes hired.

"The Baathists have slipped outside Falluja. What do you expect? The Americans have been threatening to storm the city for weeks," said Qanbar.

"The government must win over the tribes of Falluja and recruit security forces able to stand up to the terrorists. Otherwise it could have another Samarra on its hands."

Falluja and other cities in central Iraq's Sunni heartlands provided the backbone of Saddam's secular administration and security apparatus. But Islamic radicalism has gained ground there since Saddam was toppled in last year's U.S.-led invasion.

Mohammad al-Faidi, a spokesman for the Muslim Clerics Association, a Sunni group, said the insurgency would continue to find recruits while U.S. forces remain in Iraq.

"I would not be surprised if fighters have left Falluja. But the destruction the Americans are wreaking on the 60,000 civilians who remained there will only spark more resistance."

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