‘Mission accomplished’ in Fallujah but fighting continues as aid agencies warn of crisis

Violence also erupted throughout the rest of Iraq, especially around Mosul, forcing the US military to detach and rush part of its Fallujah force to the northern city.

Inside Fallujah, two mosques were hit by air strikes after troops reported sniper fire coming from them.

Two US marines were killed by a homemade bomb and a US warplane dropped a 500lb bomb to destroy what the military said was an insurgent tunnel network.

People leaving the city described rotting dead bodies piling up in the streets, and injured civilians with no access to medical help.

Aid agencies issued a joint letter in which they said there were now 200,000 refugees who have fled the fighting to live without food, water or shelter, and civilians remained trapped inside.

Yesterday, after prolonged negotiations with American troops, a convoy of emergency supplies from the Iraqi Red Crescent entered Fallujah with the first supplies of aid to reach the city since US-led forces began to blast their way in five days ago.

“Conditions … are catastrophic,” said Red Crescent spokeswoman, Fardous al-Ubaidi. “The people inside Fallujah are dying and starving, they need us. It is our duty as a humanitarian agency to do our job for these people in these circumstances.”

Civilians who remained in the city stayed indoors, frightened by the noise of battle, said an Iraqi journalist who left on Friday.

“If the fighters fire a mortar, US forces respond with huge force,” said the journalist, who asked not to be named.

The city had been without power or water for days. Frozen food had spoiled and people could not charge their mobile phones.

“Some people hadn’t prepared well. They didn’t stock up on tinned food. They didn’t think it would be this bad,” he said.

Iraqi health minister Alaa Alwan said the government had begun transferring “significant numbers” of injured to hospitals in Baghdad, but could not say how many.

Lieutenant Colonel Pete Newell, of the US Army in Fallujah, said that resistance fighters had been confined to “a box 1000 metres by 500 metres and that will be gone” in a few hours.

In Baghdad, Qassem Daoud, the Iraq interim government’s security advisor said: “Operation Fajr (dawn) has been achieved and only the malignant pockets remain that we are dealing with through a clean-up operation.

“The mission is accomplished and there only remains these few pockets, which are being cleaned up. The number of killed has risen to more than 1000 and we have arrested more than 200 so far.”

However, the authorities said afterwards that only 14 of the prisoners taken were foreigners, and 10 of them were Iranians. Daoud also said that the wanted terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was not in Fallujah

Islamist groups, including the one led by al-Zarqawi, vowed in a video obtained by the Reuters news agency yesterday to take their battle in Fallujah to all corners of Iraq.

A masked gunman reading a joint statement from several militant groups also warned that Iraqi government workers and soldiers would be targeted unless they stopped work immediately. The video could not be immediately authenticated.

The US military said up to 2000 insurgents are attempting to escape from Fallujah and the likely route would be through the south of the city, where the Black Watch battle group is based. It emerged yesterday that their forward base is at al-Qaqa’a military complex, which was looted last year after US soldiers failed to secure it. Weapons and explosives from al-Qaqa’a have been used, it is believed, in the recent attacks on the Black Watch.

In Mosul, meanwhile, masked gunmen took over banks and government buildings without interference from either newly dispatched US forces or Iraqi government troops. US warplanes had bombed the city 24 hours earlier and the police chief had been sacked after being accused of colluding with rebels. But yesterday there were reports of policemen changing their uniforms for civilian clothes and joining the insurgents.

Duriad Kashmoula, the governor of Mosul, blamed the uprising on “the betrayal of some police members”. In other districts, vigilantes set up road blocks and patrolled neighbourhoods.

There was also street fighting in Baghdad, and mortar rounds fired at the Green Zone, the heavily barricaded heart of US power in Iraq. The interim government indefinitely extended the closure of Baghdad’s international airport.

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