By EDWARD HARRIS 

                                            FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) - American forces pushed
                                            deeper into the southern reaches of Fallujah,
                                            cornering militants backed into smaller pockets
                                            of the city. Hundreds of men trying to flee were
                                            turned back by U.S. troops. 

                                            In Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, guerrillas launched
                                            mass attacks against police stations and political party
                                            offices in what could be a bid to relieve pressure on their
                                            allies here. 

                    On Friday, Army and Marine units moved to tighten their security cordon around the besieged
                    city, backed by FA-18s and AC-130 gunships. 
                    [These planes pound civilian quarters in a city of 300,000 - not in war but in peacetimes, in what 
                    is officially a policing operation against, as the Allawi puppet regime puts it, "criminals." It is 
                    remarkable that the entire civilian population, men,  women,  and children, are asked to "pay the 
                    price."]

                    Some three to four dozen militants tried to break out towards the south and east late Thursday
                    but were repelled by U.S. troops, the military said. 

                    U.S. forces were also positioned to the west near key bridges, blocking rebels from
                    crossing the Euphrates River with patrol boats. 

                   Troops have cut off all roads and bridges leading out of the 
             city  and have turned back hundreds of men who have tried to 
             flee the city during the assault. Only women, children
             and the elderly are being allowed to leave. 

             The military says keeping men aged 15 to 55 from leaving is key 
             to the mission's success.[Earlier US reports lied by saying that 
             men above 45 were free to go, being considered 
             non-combattants. Today, it is an open question whether they 
             let 56 or 60 year-olds leave the city...] 

             [General distrust among U.S. soldiers vis-à-vis the entire 
             population of 300,000 is widespread. Despite the fact that the 
             city may have harbored only a relatively small group of
             resistance fighters, reports referring to 1,500 to 3,000, 
             everybody is considered a potential "terrorist":]       ``If they're 
             not carrying a weapon, you can't tell who's who,'' said one 
             officer with the 1st Cavalry Division. [As in Vietnam, US racism 
             merges with an instinctive awareness that US forces are not 
             welcome and are seen as a hostile colonialist force.] 

                    A U.S. soldier was killed Thursday night when his tank rolled over near Fallujah, the military
                    said. 

                    Another American soldier was killed in northern Mosul during ``combat operations'' there
                    Thursday, the military said. 

                    In Iraq's third-largest city, guerrillas assaulted nine police stations on Thursday,
                    overwhelming several, and battled U.S. and Iraqi troops around bridges across the Tigris
                    River in the city, where a curfew had been imposed a day earlier. 

                    In Baghdad Friday, Iraqi security forces, backed by U.S. troops, arrested a hardline Sunni
                    cleric and about two dozen others after a raid of his Baghdad mosque uncovered weapons
                    caches along with photographs of recent attacks on American troops, the U.S. military and
                    the Iraqi National Guard said. 

                    Sheik Mahdi al-Sumaidaei, the head of the Supreme Association for Guidance and Daawa, a
                    conservative Sunni organization, was detained Thursday, along with 25 others, the U.S.
                    military said. 

                    A car bomb in the capital Thursday exploded Thursday moments after a U.S. patrol passed
                    on Saadoun Street, killing 17 bystanders and wounding 30. 

                    The four-day Fallujah offensive has killed some 600 insurgents, 18 U.S. troops and five Iraqi
                    soldiers, the U.S. military said. An additional 178 Americans and 34 Iraqi soldiers have been
                    injured, the military said. 

                    Overnight, U.S. troops launched another mass offensvie south of the main east-west
                    highway that bisects Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim insurgent stronghold 40 miles west of
                    Baghdad. 

                  An Iraqi journalist in the city reported seeing burned U.S. 
             vehicles and bodies in the street,
             with more buried under the wreckage. He said two men trying to 
             move a corpse were shot down by a sniper. 

                  Two of the three small clinics in the city have been bombed, 
              and in one case, medical staff
              and patients were killed, he said. A U.S. tank was positioned 
              beside the third clinic, and
              residents were afraid to go there, he said. 

                    ``People are afraid of even looking out the window because of 
               snipers,'' he said, asking that he not be named for his own safety. 
              ``The Americans are shooting anything that moves.'' 

                     Many, if not most [?] , of Fallujah's 200,000 to 300,000 residents fled the city before the assault 
                      [most US journalist, "embedded" with US forces,  continue to tell us.]. 
                      [But US forces kept males 15 to 55 from leaving the city prior to the assault. Male residents 
                     wanting to leave they city apparently were either sent back or detained.]
                    It is impossible to determine how many civilians who were not 
              actively fighting the  Americans or assisting the insurgents may 
              have been killed. 

              [U.S. army] Commanders said they believe 1,200 to 3,000 
              fighters were in Fallujah before the offensive [which is why they
              take tens if not hundreds of thousand of people hostage, in their
              counter-insurgency operation]. 

                    Most of the insurgents still fighting in Fallujah are believed to have fallen back to southern
                    districts ahead of the advancing U.S. and Iraqi forces, although fierce clashes were
                    reported in the west of the city around the public market. 

                    Meanwhile, two Marine Super Cobra attack helicopters were hit by ground fire and forced to
                    land in separate incidents near Fallujah, the military said. The four pilots were rescued,
                    though one suffered slight injuries. 

                    At a U.S. camp outside Fallujah, Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, commander of the 1st Marine
                    Division, said the operation was running ``ahead of schedule'' but he would not predict how
                    many days of fighting lay ahead. 

                    He said militants have been using mosques as military strong-points. 

                    ``In almost ever single mosque in Fallujah, we have found an arms cache,'' he said. ``We
                    have found IED-making (bomb-making) factories. We have found fortifications. We've been
                    shot at by snipers from minarets.'' 

                    Natonski also said he had visited a ``slaughterhouse'' in the northern Jolan neighborhood
                    where hostages were held and possibly killed by militants. He described a small room with
                    no windows and just one door. He said he saw two thin mattresses, straw mats covered in
                    blood and a wheelchair that apparently was used to transport captives. 

                    Also, a Fox News reporter embedded with India Company of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine
                    Regiment said the unit found five bodies in a locked house in northwest Fallujah on
                    Wednesday. All the victims were shot in the back of the head. Their identities were not
                    known, although there were indications they were civilians, the report said. 

                    Late Thursday, Marines found the Syrian driver captured with two French journalists in
                    August inside an undisclosed location in Fallujah. Capt. Ed Bitanga said the man told military
                    officials he had been separated from the journalists about a month ago. 

                    On Aug. 20, Christian Chesnot, 37, with Radio France Internationle, and Georges Malbrunot,
                    41, with Le Figaro, disappeared along with their Syrian driver Mohammed al-Joundi on a trip
                    to the holy city of Najaf. A militant group calling itself ``the Islamic Army in Iraq'' claimed
                    responsiblity, demanding that France revoke a new law banning Islamic head scarves from
                    state schools. 

                    U.S. officials believe the al-Qaida-linked terror movement of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who
                    claimed responsibility for many of the kidnappings and beheadings of foreign hostages, used
                    Fallujah as a base. They said they believe al-Zarqawi may have slipped away before the
                    offensive. 

                    Last April, Fallujah militants fought Marines 
              to a standstill during a three-week siege, which
              the Bush administration called off amid public criticism over 
              [hundreds of] civilian casualties. 

                    The current offensive was begun so the government can hold national elections in January,
                    although Sunni clerics have called a boycott to protest the Fallujah operation. 

                    This offensive has gone swiftly, in part because of a larger ground force and massive use
                    of air and artillery. 

                    However, 
             a steady stream of wounded [U.S. soldiers] being flown to 
             the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional
             Medical Center in Germany suggests that fighting in 
             some parts of Fallujah has been intense.
 

                    Hospital staff were expanding bed capacity as 
              102 wounded U.S. service members were
              flown in Thursday - up from the usual 30 to 50 a day 
              the U.S. military hospital receives,
              officials said. A day earlier, 69 wounded were brought in. 

                   Military officials cautioned that the figure of 600 
             [civilians and / or ] insurgents killed in Fallujah was only a rough
             estimate and that [in addition to that number] many [civilians 
             and fighters of the Iraqi resistance movement] died in air and 
             artillery bombardments ahead of the ground advance. 

                    Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Jim Krane near Fallujah; and Tini
                    Tran, Sameer N. Yacoub, Mariam Fam, Sabah Jerges, Katarina Kratovac and Maggie Michael
                    in Baghdad. 
 

                    11/12/04 07:07 

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