11/18/2004 10:00:00 PM GMT
U.S. occupation forces clashed with Iraqi fighters in the western Iraqi city of Fallujah on Thursday, ten days after the U.S. military launched a major offensive to regain control over the shattered city.
U.S. air strikes continued on the southern outskirts of the city, one photographer reported, even after a U.S. marine officer had said Wednesday that the "the battle is over."
Iraqi volunteers managed to gather 24 corpses from the streets and evacuate five Iraqi civilians, one correspondent at the scene said.
The Iraqi Red Crescent reported that 150 families remained trapped in the city.
Also in Fallujah, a Marine commander said that Iraqi fighters attacked U.S. soldiers and Iraqi government troops from a house inside the city, killing one U.S. Marine and one Iraqi soldier.
Lt. Gen. John Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said that Fallujah isn’t completely under U.S. and Iraqi government control. "The town is not quite secure at this point," Sattler said.
He reported that the total U.S. death toll during the Fallujah offensive reached 51, with about 425 injured.
Sattler also said that city residents who escaped before the U.S. assault will not be allowed to enter the city until security is restored. He also said the resettlement would be done in phases, starting with residences in the northern part of Fallujah.
"The town must be secure before we let the Fallujah people back in," he said, without providing any specific estimate of when that would happen, saying only that it would take "some time."
Meanwhile, Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, expressed his concern to the U.S. army after footage of a U.S. soldier shooting an unarmed wounded man in a Fallujah mosque was broadcasted on television channels worldwide.
The incident shocked Arab television audiences and the pictures dealt a major blow to the image of the U.S. occupation forces in Iraq. The marines reported that the soldier involved had been withdrawn from the battlefield pending the results of a military investigation.