Sunday October 31, 2004 - Fierce fighting killed eight American soldiers and wounded at least seven more yesterday as reports indicated that the long-awaited US assault on the insurgent-held city of Falluja had begun.
US warplanes and artillery pounded targets in the city amid prolonged clashes with insurgents. A marine at a nearby US base described the strikes as the heaviest artillery bombardment he had heard in two months. At least a dozen airstrikes hit a southeastern district of the Sunni Muslim city during the afternoon, witnesses said.

Yesterday, after a 30-hour drive from their bases in the south of Iraq, British units consolidated their positions near Mahmudiya, a town 25 miles south of Baghdad and 40 miles southeast of Falluja. The 850-strong battle group, composed largely of infantry from the Black Watch Regiment, will try to intercept insurgents fleeing from Falluja as the attack progresses and maintain security on key north-south roads.

A soldier killed in a traffic accident during the unit's move north was named yesterday as Private Kevin Thomas McHale, 27, from Fife.

US commanders said on Friday that the aim of any assault on Falluja and Ramadi, another insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, would be to break up secular resistance groups associated with Saddam's Baathist regime and to kill or capture radical Islamic militants led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born fighter who is responsible for killing British engineer Ken Bigley earlier this month. Improved security in the so-called 'Sunni triangle' is essential for Iraq's interim government to hold elections in January. Falluja has been beyond government control since April.

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Marine commanders say they face a volatile mix of up to 2,000 Iraqi and foreign fighters entrenched in the city. Some are thought to be former army officers loyal to Saddam, others Islamic militants led by Zarqawi.

Attempts to broker a peace deal in the city have not been successful. An Iraqi delegation that met community leaders in Falluja last week made no headway, Mohammed Bashar al-Faydhi, a spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerical association, said. Faydhi also called on those holding Margaret Hassan, the Dublin-born aid worker kidnapped earlier this month, to release her.

Talks between Falluja and another government team broke down this month over Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's demand that Falluja hand over extremists, notably Zarqawi, who Falluja leaders claim are not in the city.

The battle for the city is likely to be intense. British troops deployed last week have been warned by military intelligence analysts that, though they will not be actually involved in the battle for Falluja, they may suffer up to 35 per cent casualties if they are caught in heavy fighting.

Intelligence assessments based on the experience of units engaged in combating insurgents in the central Iraqi towns of Kut and Amara earlier this year have been passed to senior officers in the Black Watch regiment battle group, which is still moving into its new positions to the south of the so-called 'Triangle of Death'.

'The Black Watch are only meant to be deployed for a month, but that is enough time for a lot of people to get hurt,' said one military analyst.

The attack is also likely to involve thousands of newly trained Iraqi forces. Witnesses said yesterday that Iraqi forces opened fire randomly on six vehicles, including three minibuses, after a US convoy came under attack 25 miles south of Baghdad. Dr Abdul Razzaq al-Janabi, director of Iskandariya General Hospital, said 14 people were killed and 10 others injured. More wounded were taken to other hospitals.

The area is a major insurgent hotspot where ambushes and attacks against US and Iraqi forces are common Other reports said that at least half the dead were fighters who had engaged US troops. The area is close to where the British forces have now deployed.

In Baghdad, a bomb exploded outside the offices of the al-Arabiya satellite TV channel, seen by radicals as being too pro-Western, injuring at least 15 and killing seven.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,13
40271,00.html