IRAQ Troops try to back fighters into corner

Insurgents continued violence outside Fallujah.
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. forces backed by an air and artillery barrage launched a major attack today into the southern half of Fallujah, trying to squeeze Sunni fighters into a smaller and smaller cordon. The military estimated 600 insurgents have been killed in the offensive but said success in the city won't break Iraq's insurgency.
The Fallujah campaign has also sent a stream of American wounded to the military's main hospital in Europe. Planes carrying just over 100 bloodied and broken troops were arriving today at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. They join 125 wounded soldiers flown there already this week.
The large number of wounded sent to Germany suggests that fighting may be more intense -- at least in some areas -- than the military had initially indicated. Only seriously wounded troops are flown to Landstuhl.
Car bomb
Even as the military claimed successes in Fallujah, insurgents continued a wave of violence elsewhere. A car bomb ripped through a crowded Baghdad commercial street, killing 17 people, police said. In the north, guerrillas overwhelmed several police stations in Mosul and battled U.S. troops.
In fighting since Monday, thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops have been pushing through the northern half of Fallujah, reaching the east-west highway that bisects the city and battling pockets of fighters trapped in the north while other insurgents fell back into the south.
After a day of air and artillery barrages pummeled the southern districts, U.S. soldiers and Marines after sunset launched their main assault across the central highway into the southern half, the military said.
At least 13 U.S. soldiers and Marines have been killed so far in the Fallujah operation.
Military officials cautioned that the figure of 600 insurgents killed in Fallujah was only a rough estimate. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, said today that "hundreds and hundreds of insurgents" have been killed and captured.
Commanders had said before the offensive began that 1,200 to 3,000 fighters were believed holed up in the city. But the speed of the U.S. advance has led some officers on the ground to conclude that many guerrillas abandoned the city before the attack so they could fight elsewhere.
Fate of civilians
The number of civilian casualties in the city is not known. Most of the city's 200,000-300,000 residents are thought to have fled before the offensive. The rest have been hunkered down in their homes without electricity during days of heavy barrages, with food supplies reported low.
Gen. Myers, speaking on NBC's "Today" show, called the offensive "very, very successful."
But he acknowledged that guerrillas will move their fight elsewhere. "If anybody thinks that Fallujah is going to be the end of the insurgency in Iraq, that was never the objective, never our intention, and even never our hope."
A force of some 15,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops are encircling Fallujah and battling in the city, and commanders say their cordon is tight and fighters still inside have little chance of escape.
"There has always been pockets of resistance in this type of fighting, just like there was in World War II -- we would claim an island is secure and fight them for months after that," Marine Capt. John Griffin said. "Claiming the city is secure doesn't actually mean that all the resistance is gone, it just means that we have secured the area and have control."
In the past 24 hours of fighting, three Americans were killed and another 17 wounded in Fallujah, commanders said. The military on Tuesday put the total American toll in the operation at 10.
Two Marine Super Cobra attack helicopters were hit by ground fire and forced to land in separate incidents near Fallujah, the military said today. The crews were not injured and were rescued.
In the northern half of Fallujah, an Iraqi commander reported the discovery of "hostage slaughterhouses" in which foreign captives had been killed. Documents of hostages were found, along with CDs showing beheadings and the black clothes of kidnappers, he said.
U.S. troops also discovered an Iraqi man chained to a wall in a building in northeastern Fallujah, the military said today. The man, who was shackled at the ankles and wrists, bruised and starving, told Marines he was a taxi driver abducted 10 days ago and that his captors had beat him with cables.
Attacks elsewhere
Meanwhile, rebels have continued heavy attacks elsewhere in a campaign of violence meant to divert troops from Fallujah and show they can keep up the fight even if their strongest bastion falls.
The Baghdad car bomb exploded moments after a U.S. patrol passed on Saadoun Street, and the blast ripped bystanders on the avenue, near major hotels housing foreigners. Huge plumes of black smoke rose in the air as a dozen mangled cars burned, and people pulled bodies and bloodied survivors from the rubble.
It came a day after a car bomb on another crowded Baghdad street killed 10 people -- among a total 28 killed in violence outside Fallujah on Wednesday.
In Mosul, where authorities announced a curfew a day earlier, insurgents attacked several police stations today, overwhelming police and forcing U.S. and Iraqi troops to intervene and prompting the governor to seek police reinforcements from neighboring provinces, the U.S. military said. There was no immediate word on casualties.
Residents saw masked gunmen roaming the streets, setting police cars on fire and controlling some of the bridges. Police and American troops were not visible in those neighborhoods.
A car bomb targeted the convoy of the governor of Kirkuk, who escaped, but a bystander was killed and 14 others were wounded, police said.
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