IRAQ Rebels fight doggedly

Marines, receiving fire from most mosques, don't hesitate to attack them.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The mosque had been taken, but the fire kept coming.
"We've got chunks of territory, but these guys [insurgents] are all over the place," Marine Lt. Brandon Turner said Thursday as he stood amid shattered glass and concrete under the green dome of Al Kalfa mosque, his fellow Marines resting on a plush red carpet.
"They just keep coming at us."
There is no real pattern to the fighting in Fallujah -- a fierce, chaotic battle that continued to rage Thursday, house to house, street to street. But if there is any accepted truth so far it is this: The insurgents are not going away easily.
And that truth has a corollary: The Marines are doing all they can to draw the guerrillas out and kill them.
"The enemy is right where we want him. He's coming to us," said Lt. Col. Gareth Brandl, commander of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, which has experienced perhaps the toughest fight of all the units penetrating the city. "And we're killing him."
Many probably fled
Many of the 3,000 to 5,000 insurgents estimated to have been in Fallujah before the invasion are believed to have fled the Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad. But those who have remained are tenacious, even though Marines say they have killed hundreds of them.
Guerrilla snipers crouch in buildings and amid the rubble. Small squads of insurgents rush Marine positions. Dozens of rocket-propelled grenades have struck tanks and other military vehicles. A pickup truck with six guerrillas carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers was spotted near one mosque.
Several snipers on rooftops halted the advance of a platoon of Marines heading out on foot Wednesday to attack insurgents in a mosque where they reportedly had been firing on U.S. troops.
"They seem to be communicating with each other," said 1st Sgt. Jose Andrade of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, as he crouched on a main street, taking cover. "It makes it harder to get at them."
Troops are targets
Marines on the streets are constant targets. Troops accustomed to getting around on foot are being transported about in tracked amphibious vehicles whenever possible. But street patrols inevitably must be done on foot, with no lapse of concentration.
"The enemy just pops out of anywhere and fire off rounds and RPGs," said Cpl. Adam Golden, 21. "We're just looking to get him when he pops out."
Marines have advanced through more than half of Fallujah. But no one here believed Thursday that the city was close to being under control.
"We've still got to impose security," said Lt. Col. Michael Ramos, commander of the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Marine Regiment.
On occasion, guerrillas put up fights for buildings, as was the case when Marines attacked a former Iraqi national guard headquarters. The troops called in tanks and flattened the place.
More frequently, though, key buildings -- such as Fallujah's city hall and various mosques associated with the resistance -- have been taken without major battles.
Arriving in waves
Then, once the Marines are ensconced, the insurgents arrive in waves.
"Getting in here wasn't so hard," Gunnery Sgt. James Cully said of the municipal compound seized largely without a fight Wednesday morning. "But since we got here, the firing hasn't stopped."
Indeed, gunbattles resounded Thursday around the city hall complex, which was filled with abandoned and wrecked office equipment. The deep thud of the Marines' heavy weapons matched the distinctive crackle of fire from Kalashnikov assault rifles. Mortar rounds and exploding rockets shook the buildings.
From rooftops, plumes of smoke rose into the air -- the result of U.S. artillery and airstrikes, or possibly enemy mortar shells and rockets. Flares and illumination rounds lighted up the night sky. Marines demolished buildings as guerrillas scrambled amid the ruins and through alleyways. Roof-to-roof gunbattles raged.
"The enemy is like camel spiders," said Lance Cpl. Rajai Hakki, a translator with Alpha Company. "You try to squash 'em and they crawl to the next spot."
Mosques attacked
Marines have shown no hesitancy to attack mosques being used by insurgents as military positions -- usually after U.S.-allied Iraqi troops enter the facilities. Laser-guided bombs have dropped at least two minarets in Fallujah in which snipers were holed up. Marines have found extensive weapons caches and anti-American propaganda in several mosques.
"We have a lot of mosques in our AO [Area of Operations], and to the best of my knowledge in only one instance did we not receive fire from a mosque," said Capt. Matt Nodine, judge advocate for the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. "These mosques have lost the protections of the Geneva Convention. We are not here to destroy mosques. But the terrorists are using them, and we will go after them."
At majestic Al Kalfa mosque, on the highway that divides the northern and southern portions of Fallujah, Marines attacked after taking sniper fire from one of the facility's two minarets. That minaret now lies crumbled on the ground, after being struck by a 500-pound laser-guided bomb from an American aircraft.
Halted announcements
The U.S.-led attacks on mosques have also served to halt the announcements from mosque loudspeakers urging people to resist the Americans. The eerie taped recordings castigating the "infidels" could be heard throughout the first days of the invasion, infuriating Marines.
In one mosque, Iraqi troops fighting with the Marines discovered what may be the body of Abdullah Janabi, a cleric who was considered a guerrilla leader in Fallujah, according to Lt. Col. Michael Ramos, commander of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment.
Ramos said the identity had yet to be confirmed, but it appeared to be Janabi, who was a member of the town's loosely ruling Shura Council during the insurgent period.
There was no confirmed sign of two other high-value targets: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant leader said to be operating out of Fallujah; and Omar Hadid, an Iraqi extremist said to be allied with al-Zarqawi. U.S. commanders speculate that both may have fled the city.