In what has been dubbed Operation Phantom Fury, 15,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops have launched a full-scale military assault on the Sunni insurgent-held town of Fullujah, hoping to wrest control of the city from the guerrillas before the nationwide elections in January.
Thus far, four dozen enemy combatants have been killed in the operation, the Pentagon reports. Two Marines were killed when their bulldozer flipped over into the Euphrates River.
U.S. troops moved into the northwestern Jolan neighborhood shortly after nightfall with several tanks, while planes and artillery bombed the northern edge of the district to soften defenses.
The Associated Press reported other personnel pushed into the northeastern Askari district, the first large-scale assault into the insurgent-held area of the city, the military said.
Earlier today, U.S. forces seized control of a hospital in eastern Fallujah that had been controlled by insurgents and also took two bridges over the Euphrates. Iraqi soldiers stormed through the hospital, blasting open doors and pulling handcuffed patients into the halls in search of gunmen.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi spoke to Iraqi soldiers before the assault.
“The people of Fallujah have been taken hostage … and you need to free them from their grip,” he told Iraqi soldiers at the U.S. base outside Fallujah, AP reported.
“May they go to hell!” the soldiers shouted, and Allawi replied: “To hell they will go.”
Allawi used emergency powers to establish a curfew in Fallujah earlier today.
AP reported clerics in Fallujah denounced Iraqi troops participating in the assault, calling them the “occupiers’ lash on their fellow countrymen.”
“We swear by God that we will stand against you in the streets, we will enter your houses and we will slaughter you just like sheep,” the clerics said in a statement.
