The US-Iraqi massive assault on Iraq's once rebel-held city of Fallujah ended on Saturday, with over 1,000 insurgents killed and 200 captured, a spokesman of the interim Iraqi government said.
"The Al-Fajr Operation (Operation Dawn) is accomplished and what is left is the pockets we are dealing with now," said Iraqi national security advisor Qassim Dawood at a press conference in Baghdad.
The number of killed rebels has risen to more than 1,000 and about 200 personnel were detained, said the advisor, adding that the al-Qaida-linked militant Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi and Fallujah insurgent leader Abdullah al-Janabi have escaped.
The US military said Friday that 22 US and five Iraqi troops have been killed and more than 170 US soldiers wounded in the five-day Falluja offensive.
Meanwhile, TV reports continued to air footages of battles inside the city as the US forces said they needed another three days to complete the house-to-house search to secure the once occupied city.
Early on Saturday, the US marines told embedded reporters that they were controlling about 80 percent of the urban area, but fierce street battles were still raging and the martyr-style attacks were far from ending.
The US forces said they had pushed into southern Fallujah, where an unknown number of rebels were trapped and defending themselves with barricades, bombs and snipers.
In addition, US officers also admitted that many fighters had moved to other cities from Fallujah before the all-out offensive started on Monday, which aimed at ridding the "Resistance Capital" of insurgents to give way to elections.
An audio tape purportedly from Zarqawi said on Friday that a victory for the insurgents "will appear soon."
The speaker, who identified himself as Zarqawi, called upon fighters in other parts of Iraq to take up weapons and join Fallujah rebels to "burn the field under the invaders."
The authenticity of the tape, aired by the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite channel, could not be identified yet.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi authorized the US and Iraqi forces to confront Fallujah on Monday to clear the city of Iraqi extremists and foreign fighters including followers of Zarqawi, the top wanted man said to have been holed up there.
(Xinhua News Agency November 14, 2004)
|
