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US troops near center of Fallujah
By Anthony Vargas , Reporter :
US troops with crack Iraqi soldiers surged into the heart of Fallujah on Tuesday in a hail of explosions and gunfire on the second day of the largest operation in Iraq since last year’s US-led war.
“They are less than one kilometer from the center,” a high-ranking US military officer told Agence France-Presse.
Thousands of US and Iraqi troops poured in after Prime Minister Iyad Allawi authorized an all-out offensive to retake the Sunni Muslim city from rebels and restore order ahead of elections promised by January.
Shelling across Fallujah, a symbol of the insurgency that attacks the US-backed government every day, escalated as US troops advanced on the center, fending off mortar and antiaircraft fire.
As columns of smoke plumed skyward, insurgents fought back elsewhere in Iraq, killing at least two Iraqis in a suicide car bombing against a national guard base and wounding several policemen in assaults on two police stations.
In Washington US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the forces would fight to the end to retake the city, after a siege there in April left hundreds dead and ended in stalemate.
In a two-pronged assault, thousands of US troops poured into the northwestern Jolan neighborhood and the Askari district in the northeast—where they took control of the city’s station overnight.
“The offensive is from north to south,” a high-ranking US officer told AFP.
The troops “faced resistance at the beginning but there is almost no resistance now. They are less than one kilometer from the center.”
Fearful of roadside bombs as they stormed the Jolan sector, seen as the heart of rebel activity in the city, US Marines smashed through a railway line and plowed through fields, an AFP reporter embedded with the unit said.
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