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| Monday, 08 November 2004 |
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Insurgents gear up for street battles in Iraq's Fallujah FALLUJAH, Iraq, Sunday (AFP) As thousands of US and Iraqi forces prepare for an imminent assault on Fallujah, rebels holed up inside geared up for what may be the fight of their life. Many of the side streets off the main east-west road cutting through the city have been barricaded with cement blocks and sandbags to guard the fighters' movements against US snipers. The fighters have also set up various positions in deserted and destroyed parts of the city, but they only show up there when US war planes strike or shelling starts, according to an AFP correspondent inside the insurgent stronghold. Each fighter belongs to a squad that is itself part of a higher unit. The leaders keep a low profile and are only known to their men. They are very structured due to the influence of former intelligence and army officers in Saddam Hussein's regime believed to be among their ranks. "For months now, US troops have been preparing for the battle of Fallujah and the resistance has been doing the same," says Sheikh Abdul Munim al-Badrani, a Fallujah native and member of the executive arm of the influential Sunni Committee of Muslim Scholars. US commanders estimate there are 2,000 to 2,500 fighters in the city and its surrounding areas. They are a mix of foreigners and former regime elements, but it is impossible to know the exact breakdown and the level of coordination between the two groups. Iraqi and US authorities say most of the foreigners are partisans of alleged Al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A marine officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, recently said that Zarqawi has five or six men inside Fallujah and that about 1,000 to 1,500 men are led by one of his confidants Omar Hadid. Badrani predicted that the fight is going to be very different from the April siege of Fallujah, which ended in a stalemate, noting that this time US-led troops and Iraqi forces are spread out all around Fallujah from Ramadi to the west all the way to the Yusifiyah and Jurf al-Skhar area southeast of the rebel city. Earlier U.S. forces hit Iraq's rebel stronghold of Falluja with the fiercest air and ground bombardment in months, as insurgents struck back on Saturday with attacks that killed up to 37 people in Samarra. The Falluja strikes, before a threatened major assault on Saddam Hussein loyalists and militants allied to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, destroyed a hospital, a medical warehouse and dozens of homes, dazed residents said after a sleepless night. Hospital staff said ambulances had been unable to go out as the city shook to explosions. Later, they collected two dead and seven wounded civilians, among them women and children. With a U.S.-led offensive on Falluja apparently imminent, rebels hit back with attacks in Samarra, Baghdad and Ramadi, another rebel-held city. The deadliest assaults were in Samarra, where a suicide car bomber rammed into a police station and three car bombs exploded elsewhere. Insurgents also attacked three other police stations. A group led by Zarqawi, called Al Qaeda Organisation of Holy War in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the car bombings, according to an Internet statement whose authenticity could not immediately be verified. |
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