http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/international/middleeast/08falluja.html

November 8, 2004

G.I.'s Open Attack to Take Falluja From Iraq Rebels

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ROBERT F. WORTH

FALLUJA, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 8 - Explosions and heavy gunfire thundered across Falluja on Sunday night and Monday morning as American troops seized control of two strategic bridges, a hospital and other objectives in the first stage of a long-expected invasion of the city, the center of the Iraqi insurgency.

Hours earlier, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, faced with an expanding outbreak of insurgent violence across the country, formally proclaimed a state of emergency for 60 days across most of Iraq. The proclamation gave him broad powers that allow him to impose curfews, order house-to-house searches and detain suspected criminals and insurgents.

The first of several thousand marines in tanks, Humvees and armored personnel carriers began taking up positions on Monday morning along the northern edge of the city to prepare for an attack, and American jets began bombing targets.

Between 10,000 and 15,000 American soldiers and marines backed by newly trained Iraqi forces were besieging Falluja for what American commanders said was likely to be a brutal, block-by-block battle to retake control and capture, kill or disperse an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 hard-core insurgent fighters. The battle could prove the most important since the American invasion of Iraq 19 months ago.

Troops were on the move by 9 p.m. Sunday to the west and south of Falluja, just across the Euphrates River. After two hours of steady pounding by American guns, tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and AC-130 gunships, at least one objective - a hospital about half a mile west of downtown Falluja - was secured by American Special Forces and the Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion.

Tracer fire lighted up the sky as the operation began, helicopters crisscrossed the battlefield, and at least one American vehicle was fired upon with a rocket-propelled grenade as American and Iraqi forces converged on Falluja General Hospital. Shortly before midnight, American forces were exchanging gunfire across a bridge near the hospital with several insurgent positions on the other side.

"There has been extensive gunfire going across the river," said the American commander of the Special Forces operation at the hospital. "Bradleys have been shooting over to the east of us, and there has been extensive machine gun fire to the southwest of us."

As that firefight raged, extensive airstrikes and artillery fire pummeled the northern and western sections of Falluja, with great blossoms of flame brightening and then fading with each boom of the heavy cannons on the AC-130 gunships, circling over the city like birds of prey.

A huge fire burned in the midst of the city. The streets themselves, as seen through the powerful night-vision equipment aboard one Bradley fighting vehicle southeast of Falluja, appeared eerily deserted.

By midnight, the bridge near the hospital and a second strategic bridge, just to the south, were secured.

Before American jets began their bombing on Monday morning, American troops in front of the hospital took intense fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades from insurgents across the river. American Bradleys and tanks began returning fire.

In Washington, Pentagon officials said Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were monitoring the preparations and updated combat reports.

Most civilians in Falluja, a city of about 250,000 people 35 miles west of Baghdad, were believed to have left by the time the invasion began.

It was the second time in six months that a battle had raged in Falluja. In April, American troops were closing in on the city center when popular uprisings broke out in cities across Iraq. The outrage, fed by mostly unconfirmed reports of large civilian casualties, forced the Americans to withdraw.

American commanders regarded the reports as inflated, but it was impossible to determine independently how many civilians had been killed. The hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumors about heavy casualties.

"It's a center of propaganda," a senior American officer said Sunday.

This time around, the American military intends to fight its own information war, countering or squelching what has been one of the insurgents' most potent weapons. The military hopes that if it can hold its own in that war, then the armed invasion - involving as many as 25,000 American and Iraqi troops, all told - will smash what has become the largest remaining insurgent stronghold in Iraq.

And with only three months to go until the country's first democratic elections, American and Iraqi officials are grasping for any tool at their command to bring the insurgency under control.

On Sunday, guerrillas staged brazen attacks that left at least 37 people dead across the country. A day earlier, insurgents carried out coordinated bomb and mortar attacks in Samarra and the surrounding area, killing at least 30 people, many of them Iraqi policemen.

The strikes on Saturday demonstrated that a major American-led offensive last month in Samarra, like Falluja a "no go" zone for the Americans during much of the summer, had failed to rid the city of insurgents or secure crucial parts of town. Samarra's slip back into chaos raised serious doubts about whether the Iraqi government can maintain order in Falluja should an American-led offensive kill or drive out most of the insurgents here.

Dr. Allawi said he would give more details on his declaration of emergency law at a news conference scheduled for Monday. "We declared it today, and we are going to implement it whenever and wherever it is necessary," he told reporters on Sunday inside the fortified compound that houses the headquarters of the interim Iraqi government. "This will send a very powerful message that we are serious."

Once Dr. Allawi's intentions become clear, American-led forces will be deployed to help enforce the law, a senior American military official said in Baghdad on Sunday. That could include operating more checkpoints and increasing patrols across the country, all with an eye toward the elections in January.

"We want elections to take place," Dr. Allawi said. "We want to secure the country so elections can be done in a peaceful way and the Iraqi people can participate in the elections freely, without the intimidation by terrorists and by forces who are trying to wreck the political process in Iraq."

Though Dr. Allawi has tried hard to cast himself as a strongman since taking office, Iraqi confidence in the interim government has plummeted as the insurgency has become stronger and deadlier. Dr. Allawi's move is as much a show of force in a time of uncertainty as it is a way to give military forces a freer hand in combating the guerrillas.

He said he had imposed the state of emergency only after getting the approval of his cabinet and the office of the president, Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar.

Military officials said American warplanes intensified airstrikes against insurgent targets in Falluja early Sunday, including weapons depots, leadership targets and suspected insurgent fighting positions, in advance of the ground attacks. "They're striking selected targets," a senior Defense official said.

A guerrilla fighter in the city who gave his name as Abu Muhammad said in a telephone interview during the day on Sunday that the streets were empty, with only a few people scurrying to shops in the western part to buy groceries. During the overnight bombardment, he said, mosques in the city blared "God is great!" through their loudspeakers.

"We will see in the end who will win - those who worship God or those who deride him," Abu Muhammad said. "We are ready to face them, we will not let the city down, and with God's help we will teach them a lesson and inflict heavy casualties on them."

Earlier Sunday at the makeshift base where American forces have been encamped just outside Falluja, the air was thick with anticipation as the initial stage of the invasion approached. More than 2,000 marines gathered to hear a last-minute pep talk from their commanders, including Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, the top Marine commander in Iraq.

"This town is held by mugs, thugs, murderers and intimidators," General Sattler said. The marines' job, he said, was to help Iraqis do what they could not do alone.

"All they need is for us to break the back of the intimidation," he said, referring to the Iraqis who are to join the attack. "Those security forces need you beside them. They need you to motivate them. Once they have the inspiration, they will take care of the mission themselves."

Once American forces enter Falluja proper, they are likely to face a host of unpredictable dangers, including booby-trapped buildings and suicide bombers, military officials said. The insurgents who have controlled the city since April are known to have set up barricades and fighting positions on the city's outskirts.

The hardest fighting may be in Jolan, the northwestern district where many fighters have holed up. That area, an ancient warren of narrow, winding streets and dead ends, offers the best hiding places and fighting spots, officials said.

The mayhem around the country on Sunday gave a taste of what the forces may be up against.

At dawn, said Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, an Interior Ministry spokesman, insurgents armed with explosives and Kalashnikov rifles raided three police stations and killed at least 21 people in the western reaches of Anbar Province, which contains Falluja. And in an attack south of Baghdad, he said, guerrillas gunned down three officials from Diyala Province as the officials were driving to the funeral.

Insurgents dressed as policemen also ambushed a dozen Iraqi national guardsmen on their way home to the southern holy city of Najaf and murdered them all, officials in Najaf said. The attackers, who called themselves the Furkan Brigades, beat up a civilian driver and told him to pass a message on to the people of Najaf: If they wanted to get back the headless bodies of the victims, they would have to pay millions of dollars.

Several powerful explosions shook Baghdad in the afternoon on Sunday. One came from a car bomb that detonated near the downtown home of the finance minister. A suicide car bomb near a Catholic church killed an Iraqi bystander and wounded a second, while two others in the western Baghdad area aimed at separate military convoys killed two American soldiers and wounded five others, the military said.

Dexter Filkins contributed reporting from near Falluja for this article, Edward Wong and James Glanz from Baghdad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.