December 13, 2004 - US forces have launched air strikes on Fallujah after eight US Marines were killed in weekend clashes with Iraqi rebels in Al-Anbar province, despite claims the insurgency was being defeated.

War planes pounded eastern suburbs of the city of Fallujah, the backbone of the insurgency in Al-Anbar, sending columns of black smoke into the sky, said an AFP correspondent embedded with the Marines.

The strikes followed fighting that killed eight Marines and at least 17 suspected rebels in Al-Anbar over the weekend, the US military said, without specifying whether the Marines' deaths occurred in Fallujah itself.

"Air strikes were called in during escalation of force for troops in contact," a Marine spokesman said.

Seven marines assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were killed in action in two separate operations on Sunday (local time), the Marines said in a statement which gave no further details.

Another Marine was killed on Saturday.

The fighting erupted in Fallujah after days of relative calm following last month's blistering assault on the Sunni Muslim city by US and Iraqi troops.

Coalition troops killed hundreds of fighters during the attack, which began on November 8, but have continued to face resistance, often in parts of the city they had previously cleared.

"They hole themselves up in houses and they wait for the chance to kill an American," said Lieutenant Rex McIntosh of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines.

"We had very, very heavy contact against a group - you could call it a cell - which was bypassed in previous sweeping operations," Lieutenant McIntosh said.

Marines told AFP that rebels were creeping back into previously cleared city blocks, and the military was in a race to seize weapons caches before they could be used against them.

-AFP