Troops Shrink Insurgents’ Turf

U.S. forces moved Friday to consolidate control of the center of this rebel stronghold, pushing into southern neighborhoods to root out fighters dug in there.

As many as 50 rebels surrendered Friday, said Col. Craig Tucker, who heads one of the two regimental combat teams that swooped in from the north Monday.

“I understand from the enemy we have captured that their morale is low,” said Lt. Col. Michael Ramos, who heads the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Marine Regiment. “They feel that the city is surrounded, and the only thing remaining for them is to surrender or die.”

Most of those who capitulate are Iraqis, said Tucker, not the fervent foreign fighters who are said to have used the city as their base of operations in recent months. The Iraqis may be less willing to fight to the death, commanders said.

There also were indications Friday that the bodies of several fighters from Chechnya, the breakaway Russian republic, had been found in Fallouja. There was no official confirmation of the report. Muslim separatist fighters from Chechnya are rumored to have infiltrated Iraq, along with militants from other Muslim nations. There also have been reports of rebel fighters in Fallouja displaying white flags in a ruse to gain cover, to move their positions or to launch surprise attacks.

In central Fallouja, Marines said, several fighters carrying white flags -- with rifles concealed below their robes -- were seen among those gathered near a mosque. Marine snipers posted on a roof in the nearby U.S.-controlled municipal government complex opened fire, killing 10 to 12, said Staff Sgt. Jorge Olalde of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment.

“They were playing the game of surrendering but had their [AK-47s] under their cloaks,” Olalde said.

The downtown mosque where the fighters were spotted, the Marines said, had been broadcasting a call to fight U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies. American snipers destroyed the mosque’s loudspeakers.

The bulk of the rebel force -- including most of the non-Iraqis -- was believed to have concentrated in south Fallouja. Fighters fleeing U.S. troops were thought to have joined them. The rebels were being in an ever-tightening noose, U.S. commanders said. And U.S. forces also blocked the city’s southern exits.

“They’re basically surrounded,” said Lt. Col. Gareth Brandl, commander of the 1st Battalion, 8th Regiment. “They know they can’t go anywhere, so they’re fighting hard.... We’re crushing his back, one vertebra at a time.”

The insurgents are said to have built earthen mounds and other fortifications, booby-trapped houses and dug tunnels and other underground positions.

“We’ve known for months that [south Fallouja] is where most of the foreign fighters are,” Tucker said, displaying a satellite photograph of the city. “This is where we find fortifications. We’ve seen a lot of tunnels and spider holes.... These guys are probably better trained. They’ve got fortified positions.”

American and Iraqi forces now control 80% of Fallouja, Marine Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler told Pentagon reporters Friday in a telephone news conference from the embattled city. Coalition troops have killed about 600 insurgents and captured 300 who surrendered at a mosque plus 151 others. Twenty-two coalition troops have been killed and 170 wounded. Forty of the wounded have returned to duty.

Several Marine companies and at least one Army unit have moved into south Fallouja, fighting house to house and street to street, commanders said. Resistance has been stiff.

South Fallouja also may be where rebel leaders are holed up, although the most-wanted men -- Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi and his Iraqi ally Omar Hadid -- may have fled.

The whereabouts of a third leader, cleric Abdullah Janabi, remained a mystery. A man resembling Janabi was found shot to death at one of the mosques taken by Iraqi forces, U.S. commanders said. But the body had not been identified, Tucker said Friday. The circumstances of the shooting were unknown.

U.S. forces continued to draw sniper fire near the government center. But the intensity of the attacks had lessened since Thursday, when Marines fought around the clock.

The city center is considered strategic because a U.S.-backed Iraqi government will be based there after the fighting, U.S. officials said. Fallouja’s central east-west thoroughfare, once bustling, is now a deserted row of mostly bombed-out storefronts.

Marines found City Hall, police headquarters and the school administration building abandoned when they arrived. They have since pushed furniture against the windows to block sniper fire.

The insurgents “obviously knew this was going to be the seat of government power and we were going to want to take this back,” Brandl said, standing in the police station as incoming mortar fire shook the ground and snipers’ bullets whizzed nearby. “We’ve been fighting a 360-degree battle here.”

On Friday, Marines of Charlie Company attacked a mosque and the adjoining buildings, including an apartment house and an electronics warehouse that snipers had used to fire on U.S. troops in the government center. A U.S. missile hit one of the mosque’s minarets, though the structure remained intact.

Marines attacking the mosque on foot came under fire from the building, then responded with overwhelming force. The mosque’s walls were breached but no one was inside. On the second-floor balcony, Marines found a single AK-47, but the insurgents had slipped out the back.

It was a scene repeated over and over again. Insurgents chose to flee the superior force. “The enemy uses some pretty smart tactics,” said Staff Sgt. Dennis Nash of Charlie Company. “They always have an egress set up so they can get out.”

The extensive damage to Fallouja’s mosques has provoked an outcry in the Arab media, and the issue is likely to resonate strongly throughout Iraq when the scale of the destruction is known. Fallouja is a conservative Sunni Muslim community often called the city of mosques.

Marines have avoided demolishing mosques, but they have entered many. Minarets on at least two mosques have been destroyed by 500-pound bombs. Domes have been damaged, ornate glass shattered and walls knocked down.

“If we are fired on, mosques lose their protected status,” said Capt. Theodore Bethea, commander of Charlie Company, which attacked the mosque in central Fallouja on Friday.

During the fighting, Mohammed Joundi, a Syrian kidnapped with two French journalists for whom he worked as a driver, was rescued by Marines from a Fallouja house. He told authorities that he last saw the Frenchmen a month ago -- the first confirmed word on the captives since they disappeared in August.

This city of almost 300,000 appeared to be largely devoid of civilians. Most are believed to have fled in anticipation of the U.S. invasion.

Some have come forward to seek protection from Marines and their Iraqi allies. But civilians have mostly been only glimpsed, their faces displaying terror as the fighting rages around them and their city turns to rubble.

Ahmed Aboud, 37, said he stayed in Fallouja because he could not afford to leave. This week, he said, two of his children were killed.

“I buried my two children in my garden yesterday because they were wounded by gunfire of American troops. I watched them bleed to death and die in front of my eyes,” he said. “I had no way to treat them because the hospital is closed, and anyway, I cannot go out because people are shooting and the Americans are bombing.”

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McDonnell is traveling with Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. A Times special correspondent in Fallouja and Times staff writer John Hendren in Washington contributed to this report.