Steve Quayle News Alerts

Nov. 8, 2004
MSNBC staff and news service reports

NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq - With warplanes pounding the city, U.S. troops fought their way into the western outskirts of Fallujah on Monday, seizing two bridges over the Euphrates River and helping Iraqi soldiers take the city's main hospital in the first stage of a major assault on the insurgent stronghold.

The U.S. military reported its first casualties of the offensive — two Marines killed when their bulldozer flipped over into the Euphrates River. Some 10,000 to 15,000 troops, the vast majority American along with a few hundred Iraqis, are taking part.

Ten Iraqis were killed and 11 others injured during the overnight barrage in Fallujah, according to doctors.

Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi told reporters in Baghdad on Monday that he had given the go-ahead for the assault.

“I have reached the belief that I have no other choice but to resort to extreme measures to protect the Iraqi people from these killers and to liberate the residents of Fallujah so they can return to their homes,” he told a news conference.

The U.S. military said Iraqi troops captured 38 people, including four foreigners when they swept into Fallujah’s main hospital, which the military and Allawi said was under insurgent control. Allawi had earlier said the 38 people were killed, not captured.

Iraqi soldiers were shown on video storming through the facility, blasting open doors and pulling handcuffed patients into the halls in search of gunmen.

Overnight, an AC-130 gunship had raked the city with cannon fire as heavy explosions from U.S. artillery continued into Monday morning. Warplanes carried out some two dozen sorties against the city, and four 500-pound bombs were dropped over Fallujah before dawn. Orange fireballs from high explosive airbursts could be seen above the rooftops.

With U.S. forces moving in from the northwest and west sides of the city, commanders said the toughest fight was yet to come: when American forces cross to the east bank of the Euphrates and enter the main part of the city — including the Jolan neighborhood where insurgent defenses are believed the strongest.

Commanders estimate around 3,000 insurgents are dug in. More than half the civilian population of some 300,000 people is believed to have fled already.

Fight to retake city

U.S. and Iraqi commanders have vowed to stamp out Sunni Muslim guerrillas who control Fallujah, part of a campaign to put down insurgents ahead of vital January elections. Marine commanders have warned the assault could bring the heaviest urban fighting since the Vietnam war.

See images of rebels inside Fallujah by photojournalist Corentin Fleury.Two Marine brigades and an Army brigade are currently positioned north of the city, the military said Monday.

By noon, Marines fighting their way into the city secured an apartment building in the northwestern corner of the city, said Capt. Brian Heatherman, of the 3rd Battalion 1st Marine Regiment.

“The Marines have now gained a foothold in the city,” said Heatherman.

He said there were some Iraqi casualties as the troops seized the building, where Marines found an improvised bomb hanging above a doorway — one of the many variety of booby traps they expect to come across in the urban battle.

Iraqi commandos take hospital

Several hundred Iraqi troops were sent into Fallujah’s main hospital after U.S. forces sealed off the area. The troops detained about 50 men of military age inside the hospital, but about half were later released.

Many patients were herded into hallways and handcuffed until troops determined whether they were insurgents hiding in the hospital.

The U.S. military told NBC News that the decision to begin the Fallujah offensive by seizing a hospital using Iraqi forces was made for several reasons:

The facility will be needed to treat coalition casualties.
It was believed the enemy insurgents and foreign fighters would not heavily defend the hospital.
The Iraqi 36th Special Operations Battalion are considered the toughest, most capable and loyal of all Iraqi security forces and inserting them into Fallujah before any American ground troops arrive puts an “Iraqi face” on the entire operation.
A U.S. military official said there are concerns about “inflated civilian casualty figures,” so they wanted friendly forces at the hospital. It's believed the U.S. military will place embedded western journalists at the hospital to verify casualty reports.

In an apparent reference to the Iraqi troops, Fallujah clerics issued a statement Monday calling them the “occupiers’ lash on their fellow countrymen.”

“This statement is our last threat to you. We swear by God that we will stand against you in the streets, we will enter your houses and we will slaughter you just like sheep,” the statement said.

Emergency rule declared

Allawi also said Monday that emergency measures were being imposed on Fallujah and Ramadi, another insurgent stronghold nearby. Roads and government facilities in the two cities will be closed, all weapons will be banned, Iraq’s borders with Syria and Jordan will be closed and Baghdad’s international airport will be shut down for 48 hours.

The initial attacks on Fallujah began just hours after the Iraqi government declared 60 days of emergency rule throughout most of the country.

Over the weekend, insurgents launched a wave of attacks, car bombings and suicide blasts against Iraqi police and others in central Iraq — possibly an attempt to divert attention away from Fallujah. About 60 people were killed — including two Americans soldiers — and 75 injured in the attacks Saturday and Sunday.

Iraqi police on Monday launched a surprise attack on an insurgent checkpoint south of Baghdad, killing 25 militants, police said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and others have warned that a military offensive could trigger a wave of violence that would sabotage the January elections by alienating Sunnis, who form the core of the insurgency. About 60 percent of Iraq’s 25 million people are Shiite.

On Monday, the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni clerics group, condemned the assault on Fallujah. The group has threatened to boycott elections.

“The attack on Fallujah is an illegal and illegitimate action against civilian and innocent people. We denounce this operation which will have a grave consequences on the situation in Iraq,” said spokesman Mohammed Bashar al-Faidhi.

Concern about propaganda — on both sides

After the seizure of the Fallujah hospital, its director Dr. Salih al-Issawi said he asked U.S. officers to allow doctors and ambulances go inside the main part of the city to help the wounded but they refused. There was no confirmation from the Americans.

“The American troops’ attempt to take over the hospital was not right because they thought that they would halt medical assistance to the resistance,” he said by telephone to a reporter inside the city. “But they did not realize that the hospital does not belong to anybody, especially the resistance.”

During an attempt last April to break the rebels in Fallujah, doctors at the hospital were a main source of reports about civilian casualties, which U.S. officials insisted were overblown. Those reports generated strong public outage in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world, prompting the Bush administration to call off the offensive.

The Associated Press, Reuters and NBC's Jim Miklaszewski contributed to this report.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6403689/