Corpses littered the streets of the Iraqi town of Fallujah on Thursday as United States marines met ferocious resistance in the Sunni Muslim bastion, which their commander compared to the Vietnam War.
As the marines inched forward block by block taking sniper fire and hit-and-run attacks with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, a US medic said the resistance was more intense than during last spring’s invasion.
Mortar and small-arms fire struck without warning, launched by small groups of insurgents who materialised from alleyways or rooftops to launch their attacks, only then to melt away.
The thud of mortars echoed around the town and plumes of smoke dotted the landscape. Machine-gun fire rattled through the streets as F-16s flew overhead for surveillance.
After two days of ferocious fighting, the marines had managed to move just 2km through an industrial zone of the edge of the town that they had thought was largely abandoned.
The flames of exploding rockets lit the sky as the marines came under repeated mortar and rocket-propelled grenade fire from factories, homes and mosques, some of it from areas supposedly already cleared.
”Mout [military operations in urban terrain] is the most intense kind of fighting,” said the battalion’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne.
”And this is like Hue City in Vietnam,” he said referring to the former imperial capital where in 1968 US troops faced the the most ferocious street fighting of the communists’ decisive Tet offensive.
Marines, who had taken part in the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s armed forces a year ago, said the resistance they were facing from the insurgents in Fallujah was tougher than anything thrown at them by the old regime’s once-feared Republican Guards.
”Last year, we’d take an objective, secure it and go to sleep,” recalled medic Percy Davila (29) of the First Batallion Fifth Marines.
”But this is relentless. This is more like a real war,” Da Vila said at a machine shop turned into a makeshift command post.
Flies buzzed on the lips of the corpse of a 40-year-old Iraqi with a mustache and receding black hairline. Marines shot him in the neck when he fired a rocket-propelled grenade at them across the industrial wasteland of garages, factories and metal shops.
”We don’t know where to move him,” said one marine said, looking over at flies clustered on the corpse’s blood-stained neck as rockets struck just a block away, sending columns of black smoke into the air.
”We chase them. We keep it as aggressive as possible,” said Corporal Jay Picard from an improvised trench converted from a mechanic’s inspection pit.
Captain Chris Chown, a marine battalion air officer, said the Iraqis were fighting back with hit-and-run tactics and snipers, throwing small-arms fire and rockets at the Americans.
”It’s tough. These guys are determined. One by one they can’t stand up to the US military force so they are using all the scenery available to them,” Chown told a reporter embedded with the unit.
”One guy can basically hold down a whole squad. He shoots from one window and pops in another. They are fierce and very determined but they can’t shoot straight. They are basically spraying and praying.”
But Chown expressed concern that the outgunned Iraqis could end up winning the battle of public opinion if the fighting continues.
”I hope one day we don’t get so jaded we just roll down the streets in armoured vehicles shooting at whatever moves,” she said.
”If that happens we need to take a step back and look at the humanity of the place or we’ve just lost our mission.”
”We are at a crossroads in Fallujah … You get to a critical juncture where one small event is going to tip things for us or against us. If we’re not there already, we’re getting pretty close.”
Polish, Bulgarian forces attacked in Karbala
Meanwhile, Polish and Bulgarian soldiers drove off Shiite Muslims who attacked them near the municipal hall in the holy Iraqi city of Karbala during all-night battles, a Polish spokesperson said on Thursday.
Coalition forces suffered no casualties but killed nine attackers and wounded an estimated 20 others, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Strzelecki in a telephone interview from Iraq.
The Shiite militia of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr issued an ultimatum on Thursday to occupation forces to quit Karbala, where a major religious celebration is scheduled this weekend.
The attacks began about 11pm local time on Wednesday and continued until nearly sunrise, Strzelecki said. The attackers, loyal to hardline cleric Moqtada al-Sadr used machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms during fighting that the spokesperson described as heavy.
Sheikh Hamza Al-Tai, chief of staff in Karbala for al-Sadr, said he delivered the ultimatum ”in order to place the government of Karbala under the aegis of the Hawza” (the Shiite religious leadership).
”We are ready to make a gift to Imam Hussein [an imam venerated by Shiites] by purifying this land of all occupation forces,” he said.
Al-Sadr’s forces rose up in Shiite communities of central and southern Iraq last weekend after coalition and Iraqi officials charged one of his aides with the murder last year of a rival cleric in the holy city of Najaf.
Strzelecki estimated there were 500 to 600 al-Sadr supporters in Karbala and that a ”substantial” number of them took part in the attack on the city hall.
The Shiite uprising comes as thousands of pilgrims are flocking to Shiite shrines for religious ceremonies this weekend marking al-Arbaeen, which ends the mourning period for a Shiite saint martyred in the seventh century.
Strzelecki said that about five million people are expected and stressed that they will be protected.
”We are taking great efforts to make sure that this holiday goes smoothly,” he said.
Al-Sadr headquarters destroyed
Al-Sadr’s militia vowed on Thursday to resume combat against US-led occupation forces, after US tanks and gunships destroyed the group’s main headquarters.
”We had given orders for calm because we are peaceful people, and there were negotiations to calm the situation,” said Amer al-Husseini, a spokesperson for al-Sadr in Baghdad’s Shiite bastion of Sadr City.
”But after they bombarded our headquarters and prayer room with Apache helicopters and tanks, we are ready to resume combat until the last drop of our blood,” he told reporters.
He was speaking at the headquarters that were partly destroyed, with holes in the walls and the ceiling.
Husseini also said ”we will never let anyone arrest our leader Moqtada al-Sadr”, who is wanted by the Americans for the murder of a rival cleric days after the US-led coalition ousted the regime of Saddam Hussein last April. — Sapa-AP, Sapa-AFP
Battles rage from north to south
US marines bomb Fallujah mosque
Support grows for firebrand cleric