tekkmortal
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Posted: Friday November 12,2004 - 07:48:34 am
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - US troops tightened their grip on Fallujah but clashed with rebels in Iraq 's main northern city of Mosul, where gunmen roamed the streets, and in the capital where one US soldier was killed.
AFP Photo Slideshow: Iraq Latest headlines: · U.S. Troops Push Deeper Into Fallujah AP - 2 minutes ago · Zarqawi calls on rebels to fight US forces: Internet tape AFP - 19 minutes ago · Northern Iraq's Mosul Tense After U.S. Air Strikes Reuters - 31 minutes ago Special Coverage
Despite the imposition of a night-time curfew, at least five Iraqis were killed in the Sunni Arab town of Hawijah, as unrest flared across Sunni areas of central and northern Iraq.
In a sinister reminder of how Fallujah earnt its reputation as a rebel enclave, marines said they found alive a Syrian driver who had been taken hostage with two French journalists almost three months ago.
They also blew up what they dubbed a hostage "slaughterhouse" where they said militants had filmed foreign and Iraqi victims begging for their lives or having their heads chopped off.
Despite the military successes, commanders expressed fear that many insurgents had fled Fallujah before the battle for the city started on Monday and were now operating in other Sunni Arab flashpoints such as Iraq's third city of Mosul.
As the Fallujah assault entered its fifth day, US tanks rolled freely, while thousands of US troops, backed by Iraqi soldiers, moved house-to-house to root out pockets of insurgents.
"What is left (to take), comparatively speaking, is a small piece of what we started with," said marine spokesman Lieutenant Lyle Gilbert.
"We control it (Fallujah) in the sense that we are ever present but it will still take some time to secure it," he told AFP, without giving a timeframe.
A relentless barrage of US firepower over the past week has turned Fallujah into a ghost city, said an AFP reporter embedded with the marines.
Some troops swept quickly through the city from north to south, seizing key positions such as mosques, schools and government buidings, while others followed with the perilous task of rooting out the rebels, who the marines say have become more desperate as their stronghold crumbles.
The building-to-building searches uncovered Mohammed al-Jundi, the Syrian driver who was taken hostage with French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot seized by militants south of Baghdad on August 20.
"Marines located the driver of the two French reporters," a military spokeswoman said, without giving further details.
Marines, meanwhile, told AFP that they blew up one of the houses on Thursday where foreign and Iraqi hostages appeared to have been slaughtered.
Inside the building, they said had found grisly videotapes of captives, a camera and a black flag of the sort used as a backdrop in hostage footage sent by militants to television stations or posted on the Internet.
More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since April by different militant groups and many have been beheaded.
Victory in Fallujah looked set to come at a heavy price and also appeared unlikely to crush an insurgency that has plagued Iraq since last year's US-led invasion, threatening nationwide elections promised for January.
As of Thursday evening, the US military said 18 US and five Iraqi soldiers had been killed and 178 US and 34 Iraqi troops wounded in the offensive.
The military put rebel losses at more than 500.
There were no clear figures on the number of civilian casualties. As much as two-thirds of Fallujah's 300,000-strong population was thought to have left the city ahead of the fighting.
In the face of the onslaught in Fallujah, some insurgents appeared to have shifted elsewhere, with bombings and other attacks across the Sunni belt prompting curfews on seven cities.
In the capital, a US soldier was killed when his unit came under attack by improvised explosive devices, small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, the US military said.
Two other soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter were wounded.
Gunmen roamed the streets of Mosul, but the US military insisted the city of more than a million people remained under control a day after it unleashed air and ground strikes on suspected insurgent positions after the governor asked for help.
One US soldier and several rebels were killed in Thursday's clashes.
In Hawijah, at least five Iraqis were killed and six wounded when rebels clashed with police, national guards and US troops, police said.
"We do not know if the dead are civilians or rebels," said the town's police chief, Colonel Ahmad al-Obeidi.
US army troops surrounded Hawijah late on Thursday and a curfew was imposed there after eight people were wounded in clashes with insurgents, a police spokesman said.
Three other towns also saw deadly violence -- Ramadi, a Sunni rebel bastion 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Fallujah, Samarra, which was retaken from insurgents in an offensive last month, and Baquba.
On Friday, relatives of Iraq's hawkish US-backed premier, Iyad Allawi, who were kidnapped earlier in the week were still missing.
His elderly cousin Ghazi Allawi, the man's wife, and their daughter-in-law were abducted on Tuesday by a gang in three cars. The trio were reportedly threatened with death if the Fallujah campaign was not halted and all prisoners in Iraq set free.
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - US troops tightened their grip on Fallujah but clashed with rebels in Iraq 's main northern city of Mosul, where gunmen roamed the streets, and in the capital where one US soldier was killed.
AFP Photo Slideshow: Iraq Latest headlines: · U.S. Troops Push Deeper Into Fallujah AP - 2 minutes ago · Zarqawi calls on rebels to fight US forces: Internet tape AFP - 19 minutes ago · Northern Iraq's Mosul Tense After U.S. Air Strikes Reuters - 31 minutes ago Special Coverage
Despite the imposition of a night-time curfew, at least five Iraqis were killed in the Sunni Arab town of Hawijah, as unrest flared across Sunni areas of central and northern Iraq.
In a sinister reminder of how Fallujah earnt its reputation as a rebel enclave, marines said they found alive a Syrian driver who had been taken hostage with two French journalists almost three months ago.
They also blew up what they dubbed a hostage "slaughterhouse" where they said militants had filmed foreign and Iraqi victims begging for their lives or having their heads chopped off.
Despite the military successes, commanders expressed fear that many insurgents had fled Fallujah before the battle for the city started on Monday and were now operating in other Sunni Arab flashpoints such as Iraq's third city of Mosul.
As the Fallujah assault entered its fifth day, US tanks rolled freely, while thousands of US troops, backed by Iraqi soldiers, moved house-to-house to root out pockets of insurgents.
"What is left (to take), comparatively speaking, is a small piece of what we started with," said marine spokesman Lieutenant Lyle Gilbert.
"We control it (Fallujah) in the sense that we are ever present but it will still take some time to secure it," he told AFP, without giving a timeframe.
A relentless barrage of US firepower over the past week has turned Fallujah into a ghost city, said an AFP reporter embedded with the marines.
Some troops swept quickly through the city from north to south, seizing key positions such as mosques, schools and government buidings, while others followed with the perilous task of rooting out the rebels, who the marines say have become more desperate as their stronghold crumbles.
The building-to-building searches uncovered Mohammed al-Jundi, the Syrian driver who was taken hostage with French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot seized by militants south of Baghdad on August 20.
"Marines located the driver of the two French reporters," a military spokeswoman said, without giving further details.
Marines, meanwhile, told AFP that they blew up one of the houses on Thursday where foreign and Iraqi hostages appeared to have been slaughtered.
Inside the building, they said had found grisly videotapes of captives, a camera and a black flag of the sort used as a backdrop in hostage footage sent by militants to television stations or posted on the Internet.
More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since April by different militant groups and many have been beheaded.
Victory in Fallujah looked set to come at a heavy price and also appeared unlikely to crush an insurgency that has plagued Iraq since last year's US-led invasion, threatening nationwide elections promised for January.
As of Thursday evening, the US military said 18 US and five Iraqi soldiers had been killed and 178 US and 34 Iraqi troops wounded in the offensive.
The military put rebel losses at more than 500.
There were no clear figures on the number of civilian casualties. As much as two-thirds of Fallujah's 300,000-strong population was thought to have left the city ahead of the fighting.
In the face of the onslaught in Fallujah, some insurgents appeared to have shifted elsewhere, with bombings and other attacks across the Sunni belt prompting curfews on seven cities.
In the capital, a US soldier was killed when his unit came under attack by improvised explosive devices, small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, the US military said.
Two other soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter were wounded.
Gunmen roamed the streets of Mosul, but the US military insisted the city of more than a million people remained under control a day after it unleashed air and ground strikes on suspected insurgent positions after the governor asked for help.
One US soldier and several rebels were killed in Thursday's clashes.
In Hawijah, at least five Iraqis were killed and six wounded when rebels clashed with police, national guards and US troops, police said.
"We do not know if the dead are civilians or rebels," said the town's police chief, Colonel Ahmad al-Obeidi.
US army troops surrounded Hawijah late on Thursday and a curfew was imposed there after eight people were wounded in clashes with insurgents, a police spokesman said.
Three other towns also saw deadly violence -- Ramadi, a Sunni rebel bastion 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Fallujah, Samarra, which was retaken from insurgents in an offensive last month, and Baquba.
On Friday, relatives of Iraq's hawkish US-backed premier, Iyad Allawi, who were kidnapped earlier in the week were still missing.
His elderly cousin Ghazi Allawi, the man's wife, and their daughter-in-law were abducted on Tuesday by a gang in three cars. The trio were reportedly threatened with death if the Fallujah campaign was not halted and all prisoners in Iraq set free.