US forces were shelling rebel holdouts in Fallouja last week, and deadly bomb blasts hit several cities in Iraq as a report by Marine intelligence warned the insurgency would grow despite massive offensives to crush the rebels.
American-led troops engaged in sporadic battles against rebels in Fallouja late in the week after launching a devastating assault to wrest the Sunnite Muslim stronghold west of Baghdad away from insurgents 10 days earlier. Shelling continued on the southern outskirts of the city even after a US Marine officer had declared that "the battle is over".
Iraqi volunteers and US troops were collecting scores of corpses littering the battered city while the Iraqi Red Crescent said 150 families remained stranded.
The raid on Fallouja, part of an attempt at reclaiming key rebel enclaves across the country ahead of January elections, has been the largest military operation in Iraq since President George Bush declared "major combat operations" to be over in the spring of 2003.
According to the Red Cross, at least 800 civilians had been killed in the offensive. Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals by the US military, a high-ranking Red Cross official in Baghdad told journalists late last week that "at least 800 civilians" had been killed in Fallouja so far. His estimate was based on reports from Red Crescent aid workers stationed around the embattled city, within the city and from refugees, he said.
The official said both Red Cross and Iraqi Red Crescent relief teams had asked the US military in Fallouja to take in food, water and medical supplies to people trapped in the city, but their repeated requests had been turned down.
As fighting wound down in Fallouja, Iraqi commandos backed by American troops were set to storm rebel stronghold in the northern city of Mosul, where US-led forces were trying to clear insurgents who had overrun police stations.
Five Iraqi troops were wounded in a powerful blast in the west of the town, US military officials said.
The military operations came as more deadly violence shook Iraq in which at least 23 people were killed in fighting and by a bomb attack in Sunnite hotspots.
Two Iraqis were killed in a car bombing outside a police station in Baghdad and another two were killed in an explosion in the northern oil center of Kirkuk.
As the fighting went on, Arabs voiced outrage at the apparent shooting of an unarmed Iraqi by a US Marine in Fallouja, calling for an immediate investigation of this "war crime".
US and other television channels last week broadcast footage that appeared to show a Marine shooting an unarmed and wounded Iraqi at point blank range in a mosque.
The Arab League called for "an immediate inquiry into this incident and for the soldier who committed this act, considered a war crime, to be severely punished" if he was found guilty, said spokesman Hossam Zaki.
The US military said that it had opened an investigation into the incident but that the soldier involved had been withdrawn from the battlefield.
Zaki also called for investigations into similar incidents in Fallouja and in other Iraqi cities which have not been revealed through the media.
Lebanon's Hezballah movement also condemned the "crime against humanity", saying it showed the values that the United States wanted to "set up in Iraqi cities and throughout the rest of the region".
Newspapers across the region also vehemently condemned the action.
"This footage reveals the most atrocious war crimes and shameful human rights violations, which are unworthy of those who present themselves as defenders of freedom, democracy and human rights", said Al-Bayan in the United Arab Emirates.
The Abu Dhabi newspaper Al-Ittihad wrote that "international public opinion calls on America to swiftly arrange the trial, in total transparency, of the soldier who committed this crime.
"If this crime goes unpunished, it will be a dangerous precedent in American policy. This crime will then wipe out everything that America has done for Iraq", the editorial added .
In Saudi Arabia, the Al-Jazira daily said that "the world sees only a tiny slice of the war crimes committed in Fallouja".
"Where are the human rights that the American Administration vaunts itself on and which it uses as a sword of Damocles against anyone who opposes it?" asked Qatar's Al-Sharq newspaper.
Jordan's Al-Dustour newspaper called for an investigation into "massacres" committed in Fallouja. "The danger in what is happening in Fallouja is that it will pave the way for new massacres in other cities and towns in Iraq, unless the international community acts to open an independent investigation into American war crimes against the Iraqi people", Al-Dustour said.
Newspapers in Egypt preferred not to editorialize on the incident, although headlines spoke for themselves, with Al-Akhbar and Al-Ahram carrying "War crime" on their front pages and Al-Gomhouriya writing about "butchery" and "genocide" in Fallouja.
There was also condemnation for the suspected murder of aid worker Margaret Hassan, who had been born in Ireland but who had married an Iraqi and held both Iraqi and British nationalities. She had worked with aid groups in Iraq for some 30 years.
Hassan, 59, was seized on her way to work in Baghdad on October 19 by an unknown group of kidnappers. She was presumed to be the first foreign female hostage to have been murdered in Iraq, and the second British hostage.
CARE Australia, the charity organization that employed her, said it appeared she had been killed, after Al-Jazeera television received a video showing a blindfolded woman hostage being shot in the head.
As her family mourned, Britain voiced outrage over the apparent slaying and European Union Aid Commissioner Poul Nielson warned that it would make it almost impossible for relief work to continue in Iraq.
The Arab League also denounced the apparent murder. "This is a criminal and terrorist act, rejected and denounced according to any criteria... and inadmissible by every Arab and Muslim whatever the pretext", a spokesman said, adding that the League was "opposed in principle to targetting civilians".
There was no official immediate confirmation of her slaying last week.
In Paris, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said that two French journalists being held hostage in Iraq for three months had been taken away from war zones and their lives were not in danger.
Fallouja, focus of the insurgency
Fallouja, reeling under a full-scale assault, is a deeply conservative city that had been off limits to foreigners and the military for months.
Claimed by Washington to be a base for rebels loyal to Iraq's most wanted militant, Abu Musaab Zarkawi -- if not a refuge for the man himself -- it has seethed with hostility toward the occupation forces virtually since last year's invasion.
By striking at a city that has come to symbolize resistance in Iraq, the coalition forces and Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi were hoping to break the back of the insurgency so key elections could go ahead more peacefully in January.
A staunchly Sunnite city, Fallouja fared relatively well under Saddam Hussein's Sunnite-dominated regime.
Lying in the Euphrates valley alongside the main highway from Baghdad to neighboring Jordan and Syria, residents made a living from trucking as well as farming.
But the city was hit hard by the dissolution of Saddam's armed forces after the invasion, and many of its 300,000 inhabitants were left unemployed and disaffected.
Just before the assault, all males aged 15 to 50 were banned from entering or leaving the area, although estimates were that 60-70 percent of residents had already fled the city, which was left without power, water or hospital care ahead of 'Operation Dawn'.
The city has a long history of bitterness toward both the United States and its key ally, Britain. It has painful memories of its time under the British mandate in the 1920s and was also bombed during the 1991 Gulf War.
Overlooked, or perhaps avoided, during last year's invasion, the town's relations with the Americans deteriorated within weeks when US troops opened fire on protestors who demanded that US soldiers not use a school as a base.
At least 17 Iraqis were killed.
After a period of what passes for calm in Iraq, new fighting was triggered a year later by the butchering of four US contractors on March 31. Their bodies were burnt and hacked and some strung up from a bridge, shocking the world.
A US assault days later ended in stalemate and the city was then transformed into a virtual theocratic enclave, governed by the Mujahedeen Council, a collection of conservative clerics headed by Sheikh Abdallah Junabi.
The council, which mediated and formed consensus among the rebel factions, has imposed a strict brand of Islamic law, where insurgents have publicly flogged people for "blasphemous behavior" like drinking alcohol.
Two of the extremist groups are thought to be Zarkawi's Al-Qaeda group, 'Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers', and the Islamic Army of Iraq.
Zarkawi's faction has claimed the beheadings of three Americans, a South Korean, a Bulgarian and a Briton.
The Islamic Army of Iraq has also claimed numerous kidnappings and murders.
After May, US forces watched developments from outside Fallouja.
To try to distance themselves from an imminent confrontation, they formed the Fallouja Brigade, a fighting force of veterans from Saddam's army.
But the brigade quickly fell apart as the insurgents muscled them aside and many members simply joined the resistance.
Since June, almost nightly US air strikes have flattened many of the city's low-rise buildings, and recent weeks have seen the city under siege as Allawi has insisted that it hand over foreign fighters or allow Iraqi forces in to do the job.
US commanders estimated there were 2,000 to 2,500 fighters in and around the city before this month's attack. They claimed another 10,000 militants could join the fight in a city where tribal loyalties run deep.
The devastating assault on the city caused Sunnite dignitaries and politicians to call for a boycott of the general elections.
"Assaults against the cities of Najaf, Karbala, Baghdad and the savage assault against Fallouja are an obstacle to the holding of elections, which will be taking place under occupation".
The text was signed by several prominent Sunnite figures, as well as the Committee of Muslim Scholars, which had already called for a boycott of the elections a week earlier.
The interim Iraqi government is adamant that the country's first free elections in decades will take place in January as planned, despite doubts over the likelihood of viable polls within the scheduled time frame.
Chirac in London: Iraq still a sore point
In another development, French President Jacques Chirac made a two-day visit to London for an annual Anglo-French summit, with Iraq still a sore point in bilateral relations.
Chirac also attended festive events to mark the end of centenary celebrations of the Entente Cordiale, the act of friendship that sealed the alliance between Britain and France that lasted through two world wars.
But the visit was dominated by talks between the French leader and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, which also covered the Middle East, the European Union and other issues.
After being welcomed by Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, the president then had talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair at No. 10 Downing Street, the prime minister's official residence.
On the eve of his visit, Chirac, who led European opposition to the invasion in March 2003, said he was "not at all sure" that the world had become safer since the downfall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
In a BBC television interview, he suggested that the situation in Iraq has helped to prompt an increase in terrorism. "To a certain extent Saddam Hussein's departure was a positive thing", Chirac said when asked if the world was now a safer place, as US President George Bush has repeatedly stated.
"But it has also provoked reactions, such as the mobilization in a number of countries, of men and women of Islam, which has made the world more dangerous.
"There's no doubt that there has been an increase in terrorism and one of the origins of that has been the situation in Iraq. I am not at all sure that one can say that the world is safer".
Blair has been Bush's staunchest ally on Iraq.
Chirac, who last visited London a year ago, arrived in the British capital with no less than six ministers and 40 French members of Parliament in tow, including his foreign minister, Michel Barnier, and defense minister, Michle Alliot-Marie.
The queen made a state visit to France in April to celebrate the centenary of the Entente Cordiale.
A pessimistic report on the Fallouja offensive
Fresh pessimism about the Iraqi situation has been expressed in a report by US Marine intelligence officers warning that any significant withdrawal of troops from Fallouja would strengthen the insurgency, The New York Times reported last week.
The assessment, distributed to senior Marine and Army officers in Iraq, also said that despite the heavy fighting with coalition forces, the insurgents would continue to increase in number, carrying out attacks and fomenting unrest in the area.
One officer said the seven-page classified report, parts of which were provided to the daily, was "brutally honest".
It also appears to contradict the US government's victorious account of the fight against insurgents in Fallouja and other parts of Northern Iraq.
Although the resistance crumbled in the face of the offensive, the report warned that "the enemy will be able to effectively defeat [the coalition's] ability to accomplish its primary objectives of developing an effective Iraqi security force and setting the conditions for successful Iraqi elections".
The pessimistic analysis was prepared by intelligence officers in the First Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF), as the offensive in Fallouja was winding down, the daily said.
Senior military officials in Iraq and Washington disputed the findings of the report, describing it as a subjective judgement of some Marines that did not reflect the views of all intelligence officials and commanders in Iraq.
"The assessment of the enemy is a worst-case assessment", Brigadier-General John DeFreitas, the senior military intelligence officer in Iraq, said of the Marine report in a telephone interview with The New York Times.
However, the general added that there were no plans to withdraw forces from Fallouja. "We have no intention of creating a vacuum and walking away from Fallouja".
© Monday Morning 2004
