NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq – U.S. warplanes pounded Fallujah late Friday in what residents called the strongest attacks in months, as more than 10,000 American soldiers and Marines massed for an expected assault. Iraq’s prime minister warned the “window is closing” to avert an offensive.
Residents said the aircraft were striking targets in the central city market that had not been hit since April, as well as neighborhoods north, south and east of Fallujah.
Earlier Friday, residents said U.S. planes dropped leaflets urging women and children to leave the city, 40 miles west of the capital, Baghdad.
As pressure mounted on the guerrilla stronghold, the insurgents struck back, killing one U.S. soldier and wounding five in a rocket attack. Clashes were reported at other checkpoints around the city and in the east and north of Fallujah late in the day.
In Baghdad, a huge column of black smoke rose over the city’s Karrada district after midnight, and residents said they heard heavy gunfire, presumably between police and militants. No one answered the phone at the local police station.
For the past three nights, long convoys of American soldiers from Baghdad and Baqouba have rolled onto a dust-blown base on the outskirts of Fallujah, a city that has become the symbol of Iraqi resistance. U.S. commanders have been coordinating plans either to fight their way into the city or isolate it from the rest of Iraq’s Sunni Muslim heartland.
If they fight, American troops will face an estimated 3,000 insurgents dug in behind defenses and booby traps. Military planners believe there are about 1,200 hard-core insurgents in Fallujah – at least half of them Iraqis. They are bolstered by insurgent cells with up to 2,000 fighters in the surrounding towns and countryside.
In Brussels, Belgium, Iraq’s interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, warned that the “window is closing” to avert an assault on Fallujah. Allawi must give the final go-ahead for the offensive, part of a campaign to curb the insurgency ahead of national elections planned for January.
Sunni clerics have threatened to boycott the election if Fallujah is attacked, and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned U.S., British and Iraqi authorities that a military campaign and “increased insurgent violence” could put elections at risk.
Iraqi authorities closed a border crossing point with Syria, and U.S. troops set up checkpoints along major routes into the city. Marines fired on a civilian vehicle that did not stop at a checkpoint in Fallujah, killing an Iraqi woman and wounding her husband, according to the U.S. military and witnesses. The car didn’t notice the checkpoint, witnesses said.
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