Wed Nov 10, 2004 05:39 AM ET
By Michael Georgy and Fadel al-Badrani
FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. Marines backed by air strikes battled through a rebel stronghold in Falluja on Wednesday and officials said kidnappers had seized three relatives of Iraq's interim prime minister in Baghdad.
The kidnappers took a first cousin of Iyad Allawi, the cousin's wife and another relative from their home on Tuesday morning, but have made no demands, a government spokesman said.
It was not clear if the abductors were hitting back at Allawi for ordering the U.S.-led assault on Falluja. His aim is to rid the city of rebels and suspected foreign Islamist fighters before Iraq tries to hold an election in late January.
Air strikes, artillery shelling and mortar fire shook the Sunni Muslim city during intense clashes interspersed with periods of relative calm, a Reuters reporter in Falluja said.
"We've reached the heart of Jolan," Major Clark Watson said of an area the Marines view as a bastion for die-hard Saddam Hussein loyalists. "It's too early to say we are controlling it ... because there will always be pockets of resistance."
Helicopters later fired missiles at targets in Jolan before Marine infantry and Iraqi troops moved back in.
"There are still many snipers in buildings in Jolan," Alaa Abboud, an Iraqi soldier just back from the area, told Reuters.
"We are trying to surround them and take them out."
A BBC correspondent with Marines who occupied the main police station and mayor's office said they were still under heavy rifle and rocket fire, including from mosques overlooking the compound, and had fired at least one tank shell at a mosque.
FEARS FOR CIVILIANS
The U.S. firepower raining down on Falluja is sure to have caused civilian casualties, but no clear figures have emerged since the all-out assault began late on Monday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was "very worried" about the plight of the wounded in Falluja.
An ICRC spokesman said thousands of civilian fugitives from Falluja needed water, food, medical care and shelter. Local people say children have been among those killed.
As the battle for Falluja raged, gunfire and explosions echoed across the northern city of Mosul, but it was not clear who was fighting. The U.S. military, which has said rebel leaders have probably fled Falluja, had no immediate comment.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that at least 10 U.S. and two Iraqi soldiers had died since 10,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines and 2,000 Iraqi troops launched the offensive.
SUNNI ANGER
The assault on the city infuriated Sunni clerics who have urged Iraqis to boycott the January elections, and Allawi got a personal taste of Sunni anger on Tuesday evening.
"You have to stop fighting for four or five hours," Adnan al-Dulaimi, a Sunni official in the Religious Affairs Ministry, urged Allawi before a Ramadan evening meal in Baghdad.
"Give them time to rescue the injured. There are civilians getting killed in Falluja. You are responsible for their lives in front of God," Dulaimi declared.
Allawi, a secular politician from the Shi'ite Muslim majority, said he had tried all options before using force: "We have nothing against the civilians of Falluja," he said.
Allawi and his U.S. backers say disgruntled supporters of Saddam's once all-powerful Baath party and militants led by Jordanian al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have turned Falluja into the epicenter of Iraq's bloody insurgency.
The Falluja assault has fueled insecurity among Sunni Arabs, who make up some 20 percent of Iraq's 25 million people, but who wielded disproportionate power under Saddam.
In a move which could undermine the Jan. 27 polls, the influential Muslim Clerics' Association urged Iraqis to boycott any elections held "on the remains of the dead and the blood of the wounded from Iraqi cities like Falluja and others."
"I think we are looking at several more days of tough urban fighting," said the U.S. commander in charge of day-to-day military operations in Iraq, Lieutenant-General Thomas Metz.
Zarqawi and other senior rebels have probably already fled Falluja, leaving the fighting to lesser ranks, he said.
Briefing reporters in Washington by video teleconference from Iraq, Metz said the 2,000-3,000 rebels in Falluja were putting up scattered resistance with "little coherence."
Rebel casualties were higher than expected and civilian losses were low, Metz said, without giving details. (Additional reporting by Luke Baker and Lin Noueihed in Baghdad and Maher al-Thanoon in Mosul)
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