US Source: Fallujah 'Occupied'
U.S. military officials said Saturday that American troops had now "occupied" the entire city of Fallujah and there were no more major concentrations of insurgents still fighting after nearly a week of intense urban combat.
A U.S. officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Fallujah was "occupied but not subdued." Artillery and airstrikes also were halted after nightfall to prevent mistaken attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces who have taken up positions throughout the city.
Iraqi officials declared the operation to free Fallujah of militants "accomplished," but acknowledged the two most wanted figures in the city - Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Sheik Abdullah al-Janabi - had escaped.
U.S. officers said, however, that resistance had not been entirely subdued and that it still could take several days of fighting to clear the final pockets.
CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer, who is in Fallujah, says masked men in a video claiming to represent al-Zarqawi vowed Saturday to take the fight to all the corners of Iraq.
She reports that the operation to mop up the hardcore resistors is taking place rooftop by rooftop, building by building. In schools and houses, the military is finding hidden weapons and explosives -- and Saturday, they even discovered a group of uniformed insurgents concealed in a bunker. They also found a room apprently used by insurgents as a torture chamber.
Exploiting a redeployment of some troops to hotspots in other parts of Iraq, insurgents stepped up attacks in areas around Fallujah, including a bombing that killed two Marines on the outskirts of the former rebel bastion some 40 miles west of Baghdad.
Elsewhere across Iraq: Military activity surged in Baghdad, and was intense along the Euphrates River valley well to the north and west of the capital, with clashes reported in Qaim on the Syrian border and in Hit and Ramadi, nearer to the capital. In the north, trouble continued in Mosul and Samarrah.
In other developments:
A series of thunderous explosions rocked central Baghdad after sunset Saturday, and sirens wailed in the fortified Green Zone, which houses major Iraqi government offices and the U.S. Embassy. There was no immediate explanation for the blasts, but the Ansar al-Sunnah Army later claimed responsibility for firing several rockets at the zone. The claim's authenticity could not be verified.
A car bomb exploded on the main road to Baghdad airport Saturday, and there was fighting near the Education Ministry in the heart of the capital.
At least four people were killed and 29 wounded, police said, during a U.S. airstrike on rebels and clashes Saturday in the Abu Ghraib suburb of western Baghdad. One Iraqi was killed and 10 wounded in fighting between U.S. troops and insurgents in the northern city of Tal Afar.
Also, insurgents attacked a military base outside Baghdad Saturday, killing one coalition soldier, the U.S. military said. Three other soldiers were also wounded during the attack, which was caused by "indirect fire," a term commonly used to describe a rocket or mortar attack.
The offensive against Fallujah killed at least 24 American troops and an estimated 1,000 insurgents, and rebel attacks elsewhere - especially in the northern city of Mosul - have forced the U.S. to shift troops away from Fallujah.
Fierce fighting in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq this week has spiked the count of U.S. wounded as well. More than 400 injured soldiers have been transported to the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany this week, a hospital spokeswoman said.
The drive against remaining insurgent holdouts in southern Fallujah was aimed to eradicate the last major concentration of fighters at the end of nearly a week of air and ground assaults. U.S. and Iraqi forces claim to control 80 percent of the city.
"We are just pushing them against the anvil," said Col. Michael Formica, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division's 2nd Brigade. "It's a broad attack against the entire southern front."
As a prelude to the Saturday assault, a U.S. warplane dropped a 500-pound bomb on an insurgent tunnel network in the city, CNN reported Saturday.
U.S. and Iraqi forces also have begun moving against insurgent sympathizers among Iraq's hardline Sunni religious leadership, arresting at least four prominent clerics and raiding offices of religious groups that had spoken out against the Fallujah assault.
U.S. officials said they hoped the latest attack would finish off the last pocket of significant resistance in Fallujah. Next was a planned house-to-house clearing operation to find boobytraps, weapons and guerrillas still hiding in the rubble.
In Baghdad, Iraqi National Security Adviser Qassem Dawoud proclaimed the Fallujah assault - code-name Operation Al-Fajr, or "Dawn" - was "accomplished" except for mopping up "evil pockets which we are dealing with now."
"The number of terrorists and Saddam (Hussein) loyalists killed has reached more than 1,000," Dawoud said. "As for the detainees, the number is 200 people."
However, Dawoud said al-Zarqawi, whose al Qaeda-linked group was responsible for numerous car-bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages, and the main Fallujah resistance leader, Sheik al-Janabi "have escaped." The United States has offered a $25 million reward for al-Zarqawi.
As U.S. forces pressed their attacks in southern Fallujah, Marines in the northern districts were hunting for about a dozen insurgents dressed in Iraqi National Guard uniforms who were reportedly wandering the city streets.
"Any (Iraqi National Guard) or (Iraqi special forces) not seen with the Marines are to be considered hostile," Lt. Owen Boyce, 24, of Simsbury, Conn., told his men.
U.S. and Iraqi officials want to restore control of Fallujah and other Sunni militant strongholds before national elections scheduled by Jan. 31.
A four-vehicle convoy of the Iraqi Red Crescent carrying humanitarian assistance arrived in Fallujah after the Iraqi and American troops allowed it to pass.
In the southern city of Nasiriyah, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said he expected the operation in Fallujah to conclude by Sunday with a "clear-cut" victory over the insurgents and the terrorists.
"We have captured their safe houses, where they killed people," Allawi said. "We have captured the masks they wore when they slaughtered and decapitated people."
Allawi, a Shiite Muslim, brushed aside suggestions the operation would create a backlash among the country's Sunni minority.
"There is no problem of Sunnis or Shiites," he said. "This is all Iraqis against the terrorists. We are going to keep on breaking their back everywhere in Iraq. We are not going to allow them to win."
Despite the evident military success in Fallujah, U.S. commanders have warned that the insurgency in Iraq will continue — evidenced by the recent spike in violence in the remainder of the Sunni Muslim regions of central Iraq.
The U.S. command withdrew one battalion of the 25th Infantry Division in Fallujah and returned it to the northern city of Mosul after insurgents attacked police stations, bridges and government buildings Thursday in clashes that killed 10 Iraqi troops and one U.S. soldier.
Mosul was quieter Saturday, but a car bomb exploded as an Iraqi National Guard convoy sent from Kirkuk passed, witnesses said. Seven National Guardsmen were wounded.
The region's governor blamed the uprising on "the betrayal of some police members" and said National Guard reinforcements - many of them ex-members of the Kurdish peshmerga militia taken from garrisons along the Syrian and Iranian borders- had arrived to help end the violence. The events in Mosul cast further doubt on capabilities of Iraqi forces to maintain order - a key U.S. strategy goal.
Mortar rounds hit a residential neighborhood in Samarra on Saturday, killing two children and injuring eight people, police said. Witnesses said they believed the rounds were fired at a U.S. base but missed their target. Samarra is about 60 miles north of Baghdad.