IRAQ Fierce fighting kills 16 Clashes sweep Sunni region; Fallujah battle nears end

Marines found the disemboweled body of a Western woman.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Fierce battles between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces killed at least 16 people today in Baqouba and south of Baghdad -- the latest in a wave of clashes that has swept Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland even as American forces move against the last remaining pockets of resistance in Fallujah.
A convoy of ambulances and relief supplies trying to enter Fallujah was forced to turn back because the fighting made it too dangerous, the head of the Iraqi Red Crescent said. The Red Crescent and Red Cross have been unable to gain access to people inside Fallujah during more than a week of violence.
Even as the fighting continued in the city, Iraq's interior minister declared victory in the offensive. "Fallujah is no more a safe haven for the terrorists and killers. This thing is over," Falah Hassan al-Naqib told reporters in Baghdad.
Hostages freed
Elsewhere, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's office confirmed that two of his female relatives who were kidnapped last week have been released. Allawi's cousin, Ghazi Allawi, 75, his cousin's wife and his cousin's pregnant daughter-in-law were abducted at gunpoint last Tuesday in western Baghdad's Yarmouk neighborhood. There was no word on the cousin.
On Sunday, U.S. Marines found the disemboweled body of a Western woman wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket on a street in Fallujah. The woman could not be immediately identified, but the only Western women known to have been taken hostage are Briton Margaret Hassan, 59, director of CARE international in Iraq, and Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, a Polish-born longtime resident of Iraq.
Outside Fallujah, U.S. and Iraqi troops and insurgents clashed in several cities across a belt of central and northern Iraq, including Baqouba, Ramadi, Mosul and Suwayrah, south of Baghdad.
In Baqouba, insurgents attacked 1st Infantry Division soldiers with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire near a traffic circle and police station, officials said.
Under fire from mosque
During the fighting, U.S. troops came under fire from a mosque, the U.S. military said. Iraqi security stormed the mosque and found rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and other weapons and ammunition, the statement said.
The fighting took place in Baqouba and neighboring town of Buhriz, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. American aircraft dropped two 500 pound bombs on an insurgent position.
Four 1st Infantry Division soldiers were wounded, although two of them returned to duty, the military said. Nine Iraqis, including one attacker, a policeman and seven civilians, were killed and 11 Iraqis were injured in the fighting, according to Mohammed Zayad of the Baqouba hospital.
In Suwayrah, gunmen carried out near-simultaneous attacks on a police station and an Iraqi National Guard headquarters. The assault came after an attacker drove an explosives-laden car at the headquarters. Police shot the driver before he could detonate his bomb, police said.
Seven Iraqi police and national guardsmen were killed in the Suwayrah fighting, including Maj. Hadi Refeidi, the director of the Suwayrah police station, officials said.
The week-old offensive in Fallujah, the city that came to symbolize resistance to the U.S.-led occupation, has left at least 38 American troops and six Iraqi soldiers dead. The number of U.S. troops wounded is now 275, though more than 60 have returned to duty. U.S. officials estimated more than 1,200 insurgents have been killed.
U.S. forces resumed heavy airstrikes and artillery fire today, with warplanes making between 20-30 bombing sorties in Fallujah and surrounding areas. U.S. ground forces were trying to corner the remaining resistance in the city.
American forces had attacked a bunker complex Sunday in the city's south where they discovered a network of steel-reinforced tunnels and underground bunkers. The tunnels connected a ring of facilities filled with weapons, an anti-aircraft artillery gun, bunk beds and a truck, according to a statement from the U.S. military.
Civilians seeking medical care were told through loudspeakers and leaflets to contact U.S. troops.
In Geneva, the Baghdad spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Ahmed Rawi, said today an Iraqi Red Crescent convoy of four ambulances and four trucks carrying supplies reached Fallujah General Hospital on the city's outskirts, but was unable to go further.