Near Fallujah, Iraq — American troops on Sunday night began a drive into western sections of the rebel-held city of Fallujah, securing a hospital and major bridges in what appeared to be the initial phase of an all-out assault to retake the city and crush the insurgency that has controlled it since April.
The push into Fallujah began just hours after Prime Minister Iyad Allawi imposed a 60-day state of emergency in most of the country Sunday to confront a fresh wave of bombings and ambushes sweeping Iraq.
Facing a decisive battle in Fallujah where they are severely outgunned and outmanned, insurgents have engineered a torrent of attacks across central and western Iraq in the last two days, killing at least 50 people and wounding scores more.
The state of emergency declaration sets the stage for the establishment of curfews and other martial law measures aimed at reining in the violence.
U.S. troops blocked all traffic coming in and out of the city by Sunday evening, effectively isolating it as final preparations were made for a major offensive against insurgents there. Later, an Iraqi commando brigade teaming up with U.S. forces stormed a hospital. U.S. soldiers also secured key bridges, including one where an Iraqi mob in March strung up the charred bodies of American contractors.
The battle is expected to mark a decisive chapter in Iraq's tumultuous postwar evolution from totalitarian regime to fledgling democracy. U.S. leaders and Iraq's interim government are banking on a victory that would deliver a crushing blow to the insurgency's nerve center and help set the stage for violence-free national elections in late January.
U.S. and Iraqi leaders also hope the assault will root out Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, responsible for orchestrating scores of suicide car bombings, ambushes kidnappings and beheadings across Iraq.
However, the strategy of mounting such an offensive is steeped in risk. Significant civilian casualties could inflame tensions and rev up the insurgency at a time when postwar Iraq is particularly vulnerable -- less than three months before national elections.
The assault could also alienate Iraq's minority Sunni Muslim community. The influential Muslim Scholars Assn., a Sunni cleric group that says it represents 3,000 Sunni mosques, has threatened to call for a boycott of the election if the offensive is carried out.
U.S. Army Spc. Chad Running, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, pushes a cart of empty blood boxes early today at the 31st Combat Support Hospital in the Green Zone of Baghdad, Iraq. The hospital, considered the busiest American combat trauma hospital in the world, is preparing for the possibility of heavy casualties in this week's military operations in Fallujah.
Analysts have also warned that a significant portion of the insurgency may opt to melt into the background instead of fight, a tactic seen last month in Samarra during a major U.S. offensive in that Sunni Triangle city.
The most recent rebel violence, which included numerous car bomb blasts, mortar attacks and ambushes in a swath from Western Iraq's al Anbar province to the central city of Samarra, sent a clear message that the insurgency is capable of wreaking havoc across Iraq, regardless of the outcome in Fallujah.
Early Sunday, guerrillas struck at three Al Anbar police stations in the towns of Haditha and Haqlaniyah with explosions and gunfire, killing 22 people. Seven were police officers who were killed execution style.
In the afternoon, a car bomb near the home of Iraqi Finance Minister Adil Abdel-Mahdi in Baghdad's upscale Karrada district killed one of Mahdi's guards. Mahdi was not hurt in the attack.
Another car bomb directed at a U.S. military convoy in western Baghdad Sunday afternoon killed one American soldier and wounded four, the U.S. military said.
Sunday's violence was preceded by a deadly series of car bombings and ambushes Saturday in Samarra that killed 30 people, many of them Iraqi policemen. The attacks in Samarra, a restive Sunni Triangle city 68 miles north of Baghdad, came just weeks after the U.S. military claimed it successfully rooted out the city's insurgents.
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