U.S. forces entered the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah Monday, launching a long-anticipated urban offensive that is widely seen as the most significant and controversial battle since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 19 months ago.
The assault, code-named Operation Phantom Fury, was led by U.S. Marines and members of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division. It followed weeks of bombing by U.S. aircraft and began about 7 p.m. local time (11 a.m. EDT), hours after Iraq’s interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, announced that he had formally authorized the attack.
“This is an important time in the history of a new Iraq,” U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in Washington. “No government can allow terrorists and foreign fighters to use its soil to attack its people and to attack its government… . Success in Fallujah will deal a blow to the terrorists in the country, and should move Iraq further away from a future of violence to one of freedom and opportunity for the Iraqi people.”
Army Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said he expects insurgents to fall back from positions on Fallujah’s outskirts and wage a major battle in the heart of the city against roughly 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. and Iraqi government troops. He said the insurgents number roughly 3,000 and are armed with weapons ranging from AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades to heavy anti-aircraft machine guns. But he said their “weapons of choice” are roadside bombs and car bombs that they have placed around the city.
After the U.S. forces pounded a railway station just inside Fallujah with tank and machine gun fire and hammered other targets with air strikes and artillery, Marines spearheaded by tanks advanced at least four blocks into the city as helicopters flew missions overhead. Other troops, backed by Army tanks and armored vehicles, attacked in a separate thrust.
The assault appeared to be met with some resistance, with Marines coming under fire from insurgents at the railway station.
As U.S. forces prepared for the attack, two Marines were killed when their bulldozer flipped over into the Euphrates River, the military reported. A U.S. military spokesman estimated that 42 insurgents were killed across Fallujah in bombardments and skirmishes during the day, the Associated Press reported.
“I gave my authority to the multinational forces, Iraqi forces. We are determined to clean Fallujah from the terrorists,” Allawi declared earlier Monday in Baghdad. “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.
He said he was imposing a curfew on the city starting at 6 p.m. Iraq time and closing Baghdad international airport for 48 hours.
Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim city of 300,000 about 35 miles west of Baghdad, has been controlled by a volatile mix of local insurgents and foreign fighters since April, when a Marine offensive was abruptly halted on orders from the White House. Since political authority was turned back to the Iraqis in June, the final say on major U.S. military operations has resided with the government of Allawi.
Among those said to be operating out of Fallujah is the Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, whose group has asserted responsibility for kidnappings, beheadings, car bombings and other suicide strikes in Iraq, including bombings inside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone that recently killed three American civilians and as many as six Iraqis.
In a press conference Monday at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld said he has “no idea” whether Zarqawi is in Fallujah, and he said the battle for the city should not be seen as a final showdown with Iraqi and foreign insurgents.
“I would not think of it that way,” he said. “Listen, these folks are determined. These are killers. They chop people’s heads off. They’re getting money from around the world. They’re getting recruits.”
Rumsfeld said that “no one can know” whether U.S. forces will have to wage other battles like the Fallujah assault to defeat insurgents who move to other Iraqi cities. “What we can know of certain knowledge is that you cannot have a country that is free and democratic and respectful of all the people in the country if you have safe havens for people who go around chopping people’s heads off,” he said. “You cannot have a country if that’s the case.”
The defense secretary also predicted that in Fallujah, “there aren’t going to be large numbers of civilians killed, and certainly not by U.S. forces,” even though U.S. commanders estimate that 30 percent to 50 percent of the civilian population remains in the city. He said that unlike an abortive U.S. operation against the Fallujah insurgents in April, he could not imagine that U.S. and Iraqi forces would stop this time without completing the mission.
“The decision to go included the decision to finish and to finish together,” Rumsfeld said.
He and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played down a report that most of a battalion of about 500 Iraqis — part of a U.S.-trained Iraqi force participating in the offensive — failed to show up for the battle.
“I would characterize it as an isolated problem,” Rumsfeld said.
Casey, the U.S. commanding general in Iraq, said in a conference call with Pentagon reporters that there are “a good number of Iraqi battalions involved in this operation.”
He said an Iraqi commando unit led an attack west of Fallujah Sunday night to help isolate the city and establish government control over the Fallujah General Hospital. At the same time, U.S. Marines secured two bridges to cut off movement westward out of Fallujah, he said.
The city has become “the center of terrorist and insurgent activity in Iraq” and a “planning, staging and logistics base for foreign fighters and the Iraqi insurgents that support them,” Casey said. “From Fallujah they have exported terror across Iraq against all Iraqis.” Now, he said, “the Iraqi people are fighting to throw off the mantle of terror and intimidation so that they can elect their own government and get on with building a better life for all Iraqis. Elimination of Fallujah as a terrorist safe haven will go a long way in helping them achieve these goals.”
U.S. Marines have been pounding the city for weeks, targeting what officials have called safe houses and meeting places for fighters loyal to Zarqawi. The pounding has reportedly sent a large proportion of the population fleeing the city in fear.
The prospect of an attack on Fallujah has been intensely controversial internationally. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan warned last week that a military offensive there could jeopardize the credibility of upcoming elections in Iraq.
In letters dated Oct. 31 and addressed to President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Allawi, Annan said using military force against insurgents in the city would further alienate Sunni Muslims already feeling left out of a political process orchestrated largely by Washington.
“I wish to share with you my increasing concern at the prospect of an escalation in violence, which I fear could be very disruptive for Iraq’s political transition,” Annan wrote to the three leaders.
“I also worry about the negative impact that major military assaults, in which the main burden seems bound to be borne by American forces, are likely to have on the prospects for encouraging a broader participation by Iraqis in the political process, including in the elections.”
Annan’s comments and criticism drew anger and frustration from U.S., British and Iraqi officials.
U.S. and Iraqi forces entered Fallujah General Hospital late Sunday night and immediately began an inventory of supplies and medical equipment, said Col. John R. Ballard, commander of the Marine 4th Civil Affairs Group based in Washington, D.C.
“We’ve surrounded it to protect it,” Ballard said. “The key word here is to protect.”
Ballard said the military had been planning for weeks to secure the hospital as a prelude to a potential battle. He said the bridges are being closely monitored to stop insurgents from using them to attack the hospital.
“We don’t want bad guys using ambulances to attack our troops and innocent civilians,” Ballard said.
The military stormed the hospital without firing a single shot, said 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert, a spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
But later, insurgents fired rockets at the building, and when the Marines securing the bridges tried to push forward slightly, rebel fighters launched a counteroffensive that resulted in a five-hour gun battle, witnesses said.
Allawi aides, in Baghdad, said 38 insurgents were captured in that battle. Earlier Allawi had said 38 were killed but later his aides said he misspoke.
Rafe Hyad, general manager of Fallujah Hospital, said U.S. forces locked him in a room after breaking down the doors.
They “ordered me not to go out,” he said. “They searched all the rooms asking for the reason why every one of the patients is here. We have a lot of pregnant women and premature children in the hospital.”
Witnesses said U.S. airstrikes also hit the UAE hospital, which was established about three months ago, funded by the former president of the United Arab Emirates.
Kamal Hadithi, general manger of Jamhooriya Hospital, which is now functioning as an alternative to Fallujah Hospital, said the facility received 14 people who had been killed in overnight fighting.
Sources in the Muhammed Army, a group of Baathist Iraqis and foreign fighters under the control of the city leaders, said seven of the 14 dead were Arab fighters who were killed in the industrial neighborhood east of Fallujah.
In other developments in Iraq:
A U.S. soldier was killed Monday afternoon when his patrol came under small-arms fire in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement. No other details were immediately provided.
An explosion Monday night outside an Iraqi Orthodox church in southwestern Baghdad killed at least three people and wounded 40, Reuters news agency reported. The blast destroyed the outer wall of St. Bahnam’s Church and set a house next door on fire, the agency said.
Vick reported from Baghdad. Staff writer William Branigin contributed from Washington.
2004 The Washington Post Company
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