BAGHDAD, Iraq – U.S. troops sweeping through Fallujah on Thursday found what appeared to be a command center used by followers of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and a U.S. general expressed confidence the battle for the city has “broken the back of the insurgency.”
Inside the building, U.S. soldiers found documents, old computers, notebooks, photographs and copies of the Quran. Several bodies also were found.
There were also two letters inside the house, one from al-Zarqawi giving instructions to two of his lieutenants. Another sought money and help from the terrorist leader.
A separate raid near the suspected command center uncovered a bomb-making workshop where an SUV registered in Texas was being converted into a car bomb and a classroom that held flight plans and instructions on shooting down planes, according to a CNN crew embedded with the U.S. Army.
Gunbattles still flared in Fallujah as troops hunted holdout insurgents five days after the military said its forces had occupied the entire city 40 miles west of Baghdad. One U.S. Marine and one Iraqi soldier were killed, U.S. officials said.
At a base outside Fallujah, Lt. Gen. John Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said the U.S. casualty toll in the Fallujah offensive stood at 51 dead and about 425 wounded. An estimated 1,200 insurgents have been killed, with about 1,025 enemy fighters detained, the military says.
Sattler said he felt the U.S.-led attack on the city had dealt a serious blow to the insurgency.
“We feel right now that we have, as I mentioned, broken the back of the insurgency. We’ve taken away this safe haven,” Sattler said, adding that insurgents had scattered elsewhere in Iraq where they lacked the resources available in their former stronghold.
Iraqi authorities, meanwhile, said they arrested 104 suspected insurgents in a raid in Baghdad, including nine who had fled Fallujah.
However, insurgents struck back elsewhere in volatile Sunni Muslim areas.
In Haditha, northwest of Fallujah, militants blew up the mayor’s office and the police command center with four thunderous explosions. Insurgents distributed leaflets warning that anyone who “wears a police uniform or reports to a police station will be killed.”
Car bombs in Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk killed at least four people, while mortar shells that exploded near the governor’s office in Mosul wounded four guards, officials said. The governor of Diyala province northeast of Baghdad escaped assassination when a bomb exploded near his convoy, injuring four bodyguards.
Nevertheless, U.S. officials insisted the Fallujah campaign had produced a treasure trove of documents and other intelligence information that would help U.S. and Iraqi authorities hunt down insurgents. Sattler said lists included names of fighters, including some from outside Iraq.
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