American-led assault seizes third of Falluja

FALLUJA, Iraq - After two days of street-to-street fighting, the American-led assault on Falluja had wrested at least a third of the city from insurgents on Tuesday, capturing the mayor's office, two mosques, a commercial center and other major objectives in the heart of the downtown and advancing past the main highway through the city.

The insurgents continued to fight and withdraw to new positions as American and Iraqi military forces - relying heavily on artillery and air support - pushed in from the north. Battles continued in the south Falluja neighborhoods of Resala and Nazal as the insurgents appeared to be retreating along a central corridor toward the southern fringes of the city.

At the Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, the commander of day-to-day military operations in Iraq, said in a video teleconference from Baghdad that commanders anticipate ''several more days of tough urban fighting'' before the offensive in Falluja is over. He said most of the military's objectives have been met ''on or ahead of schedule'' against a force of 2,000 to 3,000 insurgent fighters.

In the first significant political fallout over the offensive, the country's most prominent Sunni party said it was withdrawing from the interim Iraqi government, and the leading group of Sunni clerics called for a boycott of the upcoming elections.

Insurgents elsewhere in Iraq, meanwhile, continued a strategy of mounting attacks. In Baqouba, a restive city northeast of Baghdad, armed bands attacked two police stations. Police officials and the U.S. military said the attacks were beaten back. A car bomb at an Iraqi National Guard camp outside the northern city of Kirkuk killed three people and wounded two. And two U.S. service members were killed in a mortar attack on a base in Mosul, also in the north.

In Baghdad, where insurgents on Monday night detonated a car bomb outside a hospital treating victims of two car bombs outside churches, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi imposed a curfew from 10:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. U.S. fighter jets made low passes over the capital, a show of strength rarely seen since the 2003 invasion.

The Associated Press reported that a statement posted on an Islamic Web site in the name of eight known militant groups in Iraq warned Baghdad residents to stay home today ''to avoid putting their lives in danger.''

In Falluja, the American military said that by Tuesday evening, at least 10 American service members and two Iraqi soldiers had been killed in the assault on Falluja. In the 24-hour period ending at 2 a.m. today, 31 American and Iraqi troops had been wounded and more than 100 insurgents killed, military officials said. No further information was immediately available

Asked about the performance of new Iraqi security forces, Metz said they had performed ably and that he had received no reports of discipline problems.

''They have assisted in clearing buildings and homes because it's a manpower-intensive battle in the urban terrain,'' Metz said. ''And they have performed very well in all those clearing operations.''

Still, the Iraqi troops have not taken part in the main fighting, being largely relegated to following behind the Americans and searching houses and other buildings after the battles end.

'It was bad, bad'

At least one enormous battle raged in the center of Falluja until midday Tuesday, as American Marines and soldiers, followed by the Iraqi forces, ground their way south and captured the Muhammadia mosque, which insurgents had been using as a command center and bunker. Eight Marines were wounded in the operation, and the military said it had killed many insurgents.

After nearly 16 hours of fighting, 1st Sgt. Ronald Whittington, with the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, appeared stunned after five of his men went down in a single moment after dashing through machine-gun fire to cross the road in front of the mosque.

''It was bad, bad,'' Whittington said. ''I don't know where the shooting was coming from.''

By evening there was a lull in the fighting, and American tanks and other units were patrolling along the main east-west road through Falluja, variously called Main Street, Highway 10 and, by the Americans, Route Michigan. Relentless airstrikes and artillery fire abated, at least momentarily.

1st Lt. Lyle L. Gilbert, a spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said that American and Iraqi forces controlled at least a third of the city.

Military officials said that the invading force also quickly overran Jolan, the northwestern sector thought to hold as many as 1,000 of the most hardened resistance fighters.

The officials said surveillance showed the American-led force moving steadily southward along main arterials and passing through the twisting alleyways of Jolan, which was thought to pose a special challenge because of its dense network of ancient streets.

Early in the day, the troops secured a park in the Jolan area that was one of their major early objectives, military officials said.

But two residents who have remained in the city, Ahmad Abdul Jabbar and Talaat Naji, said that the bulk of the American forces appeared to stay on a main north-south road on the eastern edge of Jolan, called April 7 Street, and bypass the neighborhood proper. Naji said there was only sporadic firing in Jolan.

The American military stopped short of entering Jolan during a disastrous military operation in Falluja in April. But Naji said that he saw brisk fighting in the southwestern neighborhoods of Resala and Nazal.

The insurgents could be seen on radar images collapsing southward in a central corridor toward the more modern southern neighborhood of Shuhada, the military said. That area, known to U.S. military planners as Queens, was the source of most of the mortars that rained down on American Marines and soldiers as they pressed southward in the invasion, officials said.

The advance paused after reaching Highway 10, with the Marine and Army units on the city's eastern side perched on the edge of an industrial area used by insurgents to build bombs and store weapons, often under the cover of auto-parts shops.

The roads around Falluja remained empty, with American military units maintaining a tight cordon around the city. ''The only people we've seen are men dressed in black carrying weapons,'' said Col. Michael D. Formica, the commander in charge of the isolation effort. ''I do not want these guys to get out of here,'' Formica said of the insurgents. ''I want them killed or captured as they flee.''

Many already fled

American military and security forces said Tuesday that many of the leaders of the insurgency in Falluja had probably fled ahead of the invasion, perhaps to help coordinate many of the recent attacks in other cities across Iraq.

Metz said that most adversaries were now fighting in small units and unable to mount a unified defense of the city.

''We felt like the enemy would form an outer crust in defense of Falluja,'' he said. ''We broke through that pretty quickly and easily. We also then anticipated him breaking up into small three- to six-person detachments or squads, which we've seen throughout the day.''

''There are leaders in Falluja that are orchestrating the battle to the best of their ability, which appears not to be very good. They seem to be, again, fighting in very small groups, without much coherence to the defense,'' Metz said.

He acknowledged that terrorist-style attacks across the Sunni region of Iraq outside Falluja were a counter-offensive to the American and Iraqi mission in Falluja.

''Things in the south and the far north are very calm, and it's this former-regime part of the country, formerly known as the Sunni Triangle, Ramadi to Baghdad and up to Samarra and Tikrit, is where we're seeing the most of the activity, and I think it is associated with our operation in Falluja,'' Metz added.