Troops push into southern Falluja
U.S. troops fought small cells of insurgents in alleyways and bombed-out buildings as the all-out assault on the Sunni Triangle flashpoint city of Falluja entered its fifth day.
CNN's Jane Arraf, who is embedded with the Army, reported Friday the soldiers are clearing the way for Marines, who are going door-to-door in an effort to find weapons caches and secure the area.
"They have essentially taken the south," Arraf said.
Lt. Gen. John Sattler said Friday that U.S. and Iraqi forces now control 80 percent of the mostly abandoned city.
U.S. forces hope to take over the last rebel bastion in southern Falluja during the night, a U.S. Marine officer told Reuters news agency on Friday.
Tank company Capt. Robert Bodisch also told Reuters dozens of insurgents had been killed or captured in the south Falluja stronghold.
Twenty-two U.S. troops and five Iraqi soldiers have died in the Falluja operation, Sattler said.
About 170 troops have been wounded, and 40 of them returned to the battlefield. About 600 insurgents have been killed.
"We feel we've broken their back and their spirit," said Sattler.
Small cells of three to five men continue to fire at the soldiers and hide in the urban area.
Fighting raged through the night, with light flickering in the night sky amid artillery and tank fire.
An Iraqi Intervention Forces company commander, working with the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division, said Friday the mission is meeting less resistance than expected, noting foreign fighters have been found among the bodies of insurgents killed in the fighting.
A spokesman for Iraq's interim prime minister Friday said a number of foreign fighters were detained in Falluja fighting.
They include 10 from Iran, one from Egypt, one from Sudan, one from Saudi Arabia and one from Jordan, according to Thair al Nakib.
Sattler said there are 151 detainees. He also said 300 have surrendered at a mosque, believed to be a combination of civilians and insurgents.
As of Thursday, the Pentagon said, more than 500 insurgents have been killed in the Falluja offensive.
Operation New Dawn -- intended to pacify the city ahead of the scheduled January elections for a transitional national assembly -- got going Sunday night with the seizure of a hospital and the securing of two bridges over the Euphrates River.
But the actual offensive began in earnest Monday when 10,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines, aided by 2,000 troops from Iraq's new army, stormed Falluja.
Falluja was considered an insurgent command-and-control center for the rest of the country and a base for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror network.
Source: CNN.com
There have been a lot of violence going on in other locations but since the topic is mainly about Fallujah, .... lets not go on the other direction.
"We feel we've broken their back and their spirit," said Sattler.
There are indications of high morale within the Iraqi and American troops. Once the operation ends, U.S. total casualties looks grim.