IRAQ: US and Iraqi forces hunted rebels in the devastated Iraqi city of Falluja yesterday as fighting subsided after a ferocious six-day-old assault.
The US military said 38 US soldiers had died in the week-long offensive and 275 had been wounded. The toll includes three non-combat deaths. More than 10,000 US and 2,000 Iraqi soldiers took part in the assault to take the city to help pacify Iraq for elections due in January.
The US military says about 1,000 insurgents have been killed and 450 to 550 captured. There is no word on civilian casualties, but residents say many people have died.
Meanwhile, kidnappers who had threatened to kill Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's cousin, the cousin's wife and their daughter-in-law if he did not call off the Falluja offensive said they would release the two women, Al Jazeera television reported.
No help has reached civilians in Falluja since the assault began last Monday and US forces kept a Red Crescent aid convoy of seven trucks and ambulances waiting at the main hospital near a bridge over the Euphrates River on the edge of the city.
A Reuters correspondent who drove through the city saw utter destruction. Bodies lay in the streets. Homes were smashed, mosques ruined, and power and telephone lines hung uselessly.
US marines swept through a last rebel redoubt in a southern quarter of the city that they see as a bastion for foreign fighters loyal to al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
"These are pretty diehard. These people down there are not sniping or firing, but waiting in their defences for the marines coming to their buildings. That's when they open fire," marine Col Mike Shupp said at the hospital.
Col Shupp said he had not heard of any Iraqi civilians being trapped inside the city and did not think there were any, so the Red Crescent did not need to deliver aid to civilians there.
Mr Allawi, who has vowed to crush a raging insurgency before elections in January, said Falluja had been cleared of rebels.
"Falluja is no longer a safe haven for terrorists," he told Al Iraqiya TV. "No doubt there will also be clean-up operations for some nests ... I don't know how long this will take."
He said on Saturday there had been no civilian casualties - contradicting accounts from residents inside the city, where intense violence has halted medical services and made any independent assessment impossible.
"Our situation is very hard," said one resident contacted by telephone in the central Hay al-Dubat neighbourhood. "We don't have food or water. My seven children all have severe diarrhoea. One of my sons was wounded by shrapnel last night and he's bleeding, but I can't do anything to help him."
The man, who gave his name only as Abu Mustafa, said he had seen US troops and Iraqi national guards in his street as explosions rang out. "There were bodies lying in the street."
He said he knew of six families nearby in a similar plight, but then broke down. "We are still fasting, though it is the Eid (end of Ramadan feast) today. Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar (God is great)," he sobbed.
It is unclear how many of Falluja's 300,000 people remain, but about half are thought to have fled the fighting. Tank and artillery fire shook Falluja for much of the day but by nightfall the fighting had died away.
The Falluja offensive has fuelled violence across Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, especially in the northern city of Mosul, where an uprising has left gunmen roaming some districts.
In the refinery city of Baiji, US helicopters fired missiles at insurgents, and US troops and tanks moved into the city centre after clashing with rebels, witnesses said.