Falluja update

U.S. forces backed by an air and artillery barrage launched a major attack Thursday into the southern half of Fallujah, trying to choke Sunni fighters in a shrinking cordon. The military estimated 600 insurgents have been killed in the offensive but said success in the city won't break Iraq's insurgency.

The Fallujah campaign has also sent a stream of American wounded to the military's main hospital in Europe. Planes carrying just over 100 bloodied and broken troops were arriving Thursday at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, a day after 64 others were brought in.

The large number of wounded sent to Germany suggests that fighting may be more intense, at least in some areas, than the military had initially indicated.

Violence escalated dramatically in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul amid a campaign by guerrillas this week to step up attacks elsewhere to divert troops from Fallujah.

[...]

Gen. Myers, speaking on NBC's "Today" show, called the offensive "very, very successful."

But he acknowledged that guerrillas will move their fight elsewhere. "If anybody thinks that Fallujah is going to be the end of the insurgency in Iraq, that was never the objective, never our intention, and even never our hope."

"There has always been pockets of resistance in this type of fighting, just like there was in World War II we would claim an island is secure and fight them for months after that," Marine Capt. John Griffin said in Fallujah. "Claiming the city is secure doesn't actually mean that all the resistance is gone, it just means that we have secured the area and have control."

ABC article

I'm not sure what "control" means if you are still fighting people. That you are killing more of them than they are of you, perhaps.

In Mosul, residents said masked gunmen were roaming the streets, setting police cars ablaze and holding some of the city's bridges despite a government announcement a day earlier that Iraqi forces would seal the bridges and enforce a curfew in the city, one of Iraq's largest.

ABC

Eighteen U.S. troops and five Iraqi government soldiers have been killed in action since the start of the assault on Fallujah, the U.S. commander of the operation said Thursday.

Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, commander of the 1st Marine Division, also said 69 American service members and 34 Iraqi troops had been wounded since the assault began Monday against insurgents in the Sunni Muslim stronghold.

Miami Herald article

All Falluja posts.