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November 8, 2004
With Jets and Armor, Thousands of Troops Enter Rebel-Held CityBy DEXTER FILKINSand ROBERT F. WORTH
ALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 8 - American forces began an assault in Falluja today, using airpower and armor to attack suspected guerrilla targets and sending thousands of troops into neighborhoods considered to be the center of the Iraqi insurgency.
The operation started this morning with bombing by American jets, while artillery and heavy gunfire thundered across the city as American troops seized control of two strategic bridges, a hospital and other objectives in the first stage of a long-expected invasion aimed at the center of the Iraqi insurgency.
Troops backed by tanks and armored combat vehicles punched their way into the Askari and Jolan neighborhoods of the city's northern sector this evening.
Marines and army troops breached an earth berm that runs along the railroad tracks just north of Falluja and poured into the city.
A mujahedeen fighter who gave his name as Abu Mustafa said in a telephone interview that American soldiers were engaging in street fighting in at least one part of the city, the northeastern.
The invasion is code-named Phantom Fury. Conceived about a month ago, the plan grew in part from intelligence suggesting that 1,000 to 2,000 insurgents were taking cover in the small towns and rural areas surrounding Falluja, and would probably move inward in the event of an Ainvasion to try to disrupt their force.
Between 10,000 and 15,000 American soldiers and marines backed by newly trained Iraqi forces besieged the city for what American commanders said was likely to be a brutal, block-by-block battle to retake control and capture, kill or disperse an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 hard-core insurgent fighters. The battle could prove the most important since the American invasion of Iraq 19 months ago.
The forces charged with isolating Falluja and blocking any insurgents fleeing the city or attacking from the outside are equipped with M-1 Abrams tanks, armored Stryker vehicles, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and Humvees.
"We will inspect all vehicles, and we are prepared to recognize humanitarian aid and medical supplies, " said Col. Michael D. Formica, the Army commander responsible for coordinating the isolation of the city.
Military aircraft dropped leaflets on Falluja today warning citizens about the assault, and advising them to stay in their homes. As many as 90 percent of the city's residents have left, officials say, but some may not have heard about an emergency curfew imposed by the prime minister, Ayad Allawi.
Hours before the battle started, Mr. Allawi, faced with an expanding outbreak of insurgent violence across the country, formally proclaimed a state of emergency for 60 days across most of Iraq. The proclamation gave him broad powers that allow him to impose curfews, order house-to-house searches and detain suspected criminals and insurgents.
Today, he said that the American-led operation in Falluja had his full backing.
"I gave my authority to the multinational forces, Iraqi forces," he said at a news conference.
"Yesterday evening the Iraqi forces were able to take control of Falluja hospital to defeat the terrorists and armed groups so the citizens of Falluja will get help," he said.
Mr. Allawi said that four foreign terrorists were detained in a raid on the hospital and 38 people were killed, but it was not clear whether they were Iraqis. "They were barricaded in the hospital to carry out their terrorist acts," Mr. Allawi said.
For more than a week, Dr. Allawi had been saying the window for a peaceful solution was fast closing, even though no peace talks were actually taking place between leaders of Falluja and the Iraqi government. His statement this afternoon was simply the formal proclamation of a decision he appears to have settled on days, if not weeks, ago, undoubtedly with strong guidance from American commanders and the Bush administration.
The prime minister then flew via helicopter to the Marine base called Camp Falluja, on the outskirts of the besieged city, to allow the news media to see him rallying the American and Iraqi troops to battle.
"The people of Falluja have been taken hostage," he told Iraqi soldiers swarming around him, "and you need to free them from their grip."
"May they go to hell!" the soldiers shouted, to which Dr. Allawi replied: "To hell they will go."
At his appearance in Baghdad, Dr. Allawi unveiled the first measures of the state of emergency that he declared on Sunday to be in effect for 60 days. He said the Baghdad International Airport will be closed for 48 hours, and the borders with Syria and Jordan will be sealed indefinitely except to allow movement of trucks carrying food and emergency supplies.
All roads going running in and out of Falluja and the provincial capital of Ramadi, just 30 miles west, have been shut down, he said, and a round-the-clock curfew was imposed on the two cities starting at 6 p.m. today. Residents have been banned from carrying weapons.
The measures in Falluja had little practical value, since the city of 300,000 has never been controlled by the interim government. For Americans, the city has been a "no go" zone since early May, when the Marines, in the wake of a bloody and ill-fated assault, relinquished authority to an Iraqi militia made up partly of the very insurgents they had been fighting. Mujahedeen quickly seized power and installed a Taliban-like government there, and the battle now under way is aimed at setting right the huge misstep made last spring.
Dr. Allawi has said that Falluja, Ramadi and other cities rife with insurgents must be brought under control well before January, when the country will hold its first democratic elections. But the offensive in Falluja is a big gamble. Many of the guerillas might have already left and could be awaiting the withdrawal of the American troops to return. And civilians in Falluja and across Iraq, especially Sunni Arabs, who dominate the province that includes Falluja, could become so infuriated at the invasion that they boycott the elections, throwing the legitimacy of the outcome into question.
A wave of bloody attacks by guerillas over the weekend and today left scores dead and raised doubts about whether a concentrated assault in Falluja will actually dampen the insurgency.
Today, the American military said in a statement that an American soldier was killed by small arms fire when his patrol was attacked in eastern Baghdad.
Two car bombs aimed at Christian churches exploded within minutes of each other in southern Baghdad this evening. The first, at St. George Church, did not cause any injuries, but the second, less than a miles east at St. Matthew Church, drew Iraqi police and ambulances to the scene, the military said. Four people were killed and at least 30 wounded, a police official said.
Late today, a powerful car bomb exploded outside Yarmouk Hospital, the site of the capital's largest emergency room, where most of the injured from the church bombing had been taken. There was no immediate report of casualties.
In the northern city of Mosul, where the Stryker Brigade is losing ground in the guerilla war, insurgents armed with Kalashnikovs poured out into the streets at a major intersection at 3 p.m. to fire at American troops, witnesses said.
One resident, Yasir Abdul-Razzaq, said he saw small groups of fighters carrying around mortar tubes and exchanging coordinates with each other over cellphones before launching the projectiles. American soldiers fired back and called in helicopters.
A senior American military official in Baghdad said the number of roadside bombs and suicide car bombs had doubled across Iraq recently, with the biggest increase in Mosul.
News agencies reported that two suicide car bombs exploded in Ramadi today, near American convoys, though no casualties were reported. Another detonated along the perilous five-mile airport road in Baghdad, apparently next to a sport utility vehicle, the type of car favored by Western contractors. A Reuters photographer at the scene said he saw American soldiers dragging three corpses from the vehicle, though the bodies could not be identified.
Before American jets began their bombing of Falluja this morning, American troops in front of the hospital took intense fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades from insurgents across the river. American Bradleys and tanks began returning fire.
It was the second time in six months that a battle had raged in Falluja. In April, American troops were closing in on the city center when popular uprisings broke out in cities across Iraq. The outrage, fed by mostly unconfirmed reports of large civilian casualties, forced the Americans to withdraw.
American commanders regarded the reports as inflated, but it was impossible to determine independently how many civilians had been killed. The hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumors about heavy casualties.
In Washington today, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was asked whether the battle for Falluja would continue until there was a "clear and final" victory, unlike last spring's campaign for the city.
"I cannot imagine that it would stop without being completed," Mr. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from near Falluja for this article, Edward Wong and James Glanz from Baghdad, and Christine Hauser from New York.
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