U.S. tanks and armored vehicles were seen moving Monday evening toward northern Fallujah backed by artillery and warplanes, locals said. Resistance fighters tried to block the American progress by firing mortar shells and automatic weapons, they added.
This development came hours after Iraqi PM, Iyad Allawi, said he had given the green light for international and Iraqi forces to launch the offensive against Fallujah, considered the strongest bastion of Iraq's resistance. "We are determined to clean Fallujah of terrorists," he said.
Earlier in the day, U.S. occupation troops stormed into the western outskirts of Fallujah early Monday, seizing the main city hospital and securing two key bridges over the Euphrates river.
U.S. officials, however, said the toughest fight was yet to come - when American soldiers move into the main part of the city on the east bank of the river, including the Jolan neighborhood. Some 20,000 US and Iraqi troops are gathered around Fallujah, west of Baghdad.
Several hundred Iraqi troops were dispatched into Fallujah's main hospital after U.S. forces sealed off the area. The troops held about 50 men of military age inside the hospital, but about half were later freed.
According to The AP, Dr. Salih al-Issawi, head of the hospital, said he had asked U.S. officers to allow doctors and ambulances go inside the main part of the city to help the injured but they refused.
"The American troops' attempt to take over the hospital was not right because they thought that they would halt medical assistance to the resistance," he said by telephone. "But they did not realize that the hospital does not belong to anybody, especially the resistance."
Meanwhile, US warplanes and artillery shells hit the center of the city during the morning, leaving 12 people dead, according to an official from a local clinic. An official at a local clinic told AFP 10 people were killed when a US plane attacked their house near the Faruq mosque in the center of the city, while two hours later, shells landing near a local cemetery killed two other people.
A US military spokesman claimed that 42 "insurgents" were killed across Fallujah in the opening round of attacks.
Also in Fallujah, two Marines were killed, the U.S. military confirmed. The two drowned when their bulldozer flipped over into the Euphrates River, the military said. Their bodies were discovered at 8 a.m. in the river, the U.S. military said. (albawaba.com)
