U.S. forces push into Fallujah as guerillas attack in Mosul

A Marine general said almost every mosque in Fallujah holds a weapons cache.
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) -- American forces pushed deeper into the southern reaches of Fallujah, cornering militants backed into smaller pockets of the city. Hundreds of men trying to flee were turned back by U.S. troops.
In Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, guerrillas launched mass attacks against police stations and political party offices in what could be a bid to relieve pressure on their allies here.
Army and Marine units moved to tighten their security cordon around Fallujah today, backed by FA-18s and AC-130 gunships.
Some three to four dozen militants tried to break out toward the south and east late Thursday but were repelled by U.S. troops, the military said.
U.S. forces were also positioned to the west near key bridges with patrol boats, blocking rebels from crossing the Euphrates River.
Cut off
Troops have cut off all roads and bridges leading out of the city and have turned back hundreds of men who have tried to flee the city during the assault. Only women, children and the elderly are being allowed to leave.
The military says keeping men ages 15 to 55 from leaving is key to the mission's success.
"If they're not carrying a weapon, you can't tell who's who," said one officer with the 1st Cavalry Division.
A U.S. soldier was killed Thursday night when his tank rolled over near Fallujah, the military said.
Another American soldier was killed in northern Mosul during "combat operations" there Thursday, the military said.
In Iraq's third-largest city, guerrillas assaulted nine police stations Thursday, overwhelming several, and battled U.S. and Iraqi troops around bridges across the Tigris River in the city, where a curfew had been imposed a day earlier.
Action in Baghdad
In Baghdad today, Iraqi security forces, backed by U.S. troops, arrested a hard-line Sunni cleric and about two dozen others after a raid of his Baghdad mosque uncovered weapons caches along with photographs of recent attacks on American troops, the U.S. military and the Iraqi National Guard said.
Sheik Mahdi al-Sumaidaei, the head of the Supreme Association for Guidance and Daawa, a conservative Sunni organization, was detained Thursday, along with 25 others, the U.S. military said.
A car bomb in the capital Thursday exploded Thursday moments after a U.S. patrol passed on Saadoun Street, killing 17 bystanders and wounding 30.
The four-day Fallujah offensive has killed some 600 insurgents, 18 U.S. troops and five Iraqi soldiers, the U.S. military said. An additional 178 Americans and 34 Iraqi soldiers have been injured, the military said.
Overnight, U.S. troops launched another mass offensive south of the main east-west highway that bisects Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim insurgent stronghold 40 miles west of Baghdad.
An Iraqi journalist in the city reported seeing burned U.S. vehicles and bodies in the street, with more buried under the wreckage. He said two men trying to move a corpse were shot down by a sniper.
Two of the three small clinics in the city have been bombed, and in one case, medical staff and patients were killed, he said. A U.S. tank was positioned beside the third clinic, and residents were afraid to go there, he said.
"People are afraid of even looking out the window because of snipers," he said, asking that he not be named for his own safety. "The Americans are shooting anything that moves."
Residents fled
Many, if not most, of Fallujah's 200,000 to 300,000 residents fled the city before the assault. It is impossible to determine how many civilians who were not actively fighting the Americans or assisting the insurgents may have been killed.
Commanders said they believe 1,200 to 3,000 fighters were in Fallujah before the offensive.
Most of the insurgents still fighting in Fallujah are believed to have fallen back to southern districts ahead of the advancing U.S. and Iraqi forces, although fierce clashes were reported in the west of the city around the public market.
Helicopters hit
Meanwhile, two Marine Super Cobra attack helicopters were hit by ground fire and forced to land in separate attacks near Fallujah, the military said. The four pilots were rescued, though one suffered slight injuries.
At a U.S. camp outside Fallujah, Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, commander of the 1st Marine Division, said the operation was running "ahead of schedule," but he would not predict how many days of fighting lay ahead.
He said militants have been using mosques as military strong-points.
"In almost every single mosque in Fallujah, we have found an arms cache," he said. "We have found IED-making (bomb-making) factories. We have found fortifications. We've been shot at by snipers from minarets."
Natonski also said he had visited a "slaughterhouse" in the northern Jolan neighborhood where hostages were held and possibly killed by militants. He described a small room with no windows and just one door. He said he saw two thin mattresses, straw mats covered in blood and a wheelchair that apparently was used to transport captives.
Five bodies found
Also, a Fox News reporter embedded with India Company of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment said the unit found five bodies in a locked house in northwest Fallujah on Wednesday. All the victims were shot in the back of the head. Their identities were not known, though there were indications they were civilians, the report said.
Late Thursday, Marines found the Syrian driver captured with two French journalists in August inside an undisclosed location in Fallujah. Capt. Ed Bitanga said the man told military officials he had been separated from the journalists about a month ago.
On Aug. 20, Christian Chesnot, 37, with Radio France Internationale, and Georges Malbrunot, 41, with Le Figaro, disappeared along with their Syrian driver Mohammed al-Joundi on a trip to the holy city of Najaf. A militant group calling itself "the Islamic Army in Iraq" claimed responsibility, demanding that France revoke a new law banning Islamic head scarves from state schools.
U.S. officials believe the Al-Qaida-linked terror movement of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who claimed responsibility for many of the kidnappings and beheadings of foreign hostages, used Fallujah as a base. They said they believe al-Zarqawi may have slipped away before the offensive.
April siege
Last April, Fallujah militants fought Marines to a standstill during a three-week siege, which the Bush administration called off amid public criticism over civilian casualties.
The current offensive was begun so the government can hold national elections in January, although Sunni clerics have called a boycott to protest the Fallujah operation.
This offensive has gone swiftly, in part because of a larger ground force and massive use of air and artillery.
However, a steady stream of wounded being flown to the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany suggests that fighting in some parts of Fallujah has been intense.
Hospital staff members were expanding bed capacity as 102 wounded U.S. service members were flown in Thursday -- up from the usual 30 to 50 a day the U.S. military hospital receives, officials said. A day earlier, 69 wounded were brought in.
Military officials cautioned that the figure of 600 insurgents killed in Fallujah was only a rough estimate and that many died in air and artillery bombardments ahead of the ground advance.