Friday, November 12, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.Reservists...

Friday, November 12, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.

Reservists in Iraq hit hard since Fallujah fight began

By Seattle Times news services

WASHINGTON — At least nine Army and Marine reservists died in Iraq on the first full day of the Fallujah offensive, the highest single-day death toll for part-time troops since U.S. forces entered Iraq in March 2003.

Since Monday, U.S. and Iraqi troops have been fighting their way through the northern half of Fallujah, reaching the east-west highway that bisects the city and battling pockets of fighters trapped in the north while other insurgents fell back into the south. U.S. forces backed by an air and artillery barrage launched a major new attack yesterday into the southern half of Fallujah, trying to choke fighters in a shrinking cordon.

Most of those killed in Fallujah, Baghdad, Mosul and other cities where insurgents are active have not been identified by military authorities, so it's not possible to give a complete account beyond Monday.

In the Fallujah offensive alone, at least 18 U.S. troops had been killed in action and 178 wounded as of yesterday, according to Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, commander of the 1st Marine Division in Fallujah.

The more severely injured — 102 yesterday — were flown to Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany, the usual facility for seriously injured soldiers.

Nine is the highest number of part-time soldiers and Marines to have died in Iraq on a single day. The only comparable surge in deaths of reservists was in June 2004, when nine died in a four-day span, according to Pentagon records.

Of the nine reservists killed Monday, six were members of the Marine Corps Reserve, two were Army National Guard and one was Army Reserve.

An Army National Guard soldier from California was killed Sunday in Baghdad.

The Pentagon's reporting of casualties since the Fallujah offensive began Monday has been slower and more incomplete than normal, in part because the military believes that detailed information is of potential value to the insurgent forces they are battling in the Sunni Arab city.

Five Iraqi soldiers had been killed and 34 wounded, Natonski said.

About 600 Iraqi insurgents were killed, said a military spokesman, but it was unclear how that estimate was computed. People escaping Fallujah said they had to walk over corpses to leave and the city had the heavy stench of rotting bodies, according to several people who made their way to Baghdad yesterday.

There was no information on civilian casualties. Fallujah residents huddled in their homes, staying away from windows in fear of U.S. snipers firing at any movement, an Iraqi journalist in the city said. Most of the city's 200,000 to 300,000 residents are thought to have fled before the offensive. Those remaining have endured days without electricity, frequent barrages and dwindling food supplies.

"It has been some hard fighting. And there have been a lot of insurgents — many, many, insurgents, hundreds and hundreds of insurgents who have either been killed or captured in this activity so far," said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an interview with ABC news.

It is unclear how many of the nine reservists killed Monday were directly involved in the Fallujah fighting. Some clearly were not; Spc. Bryan L. Freeman, of the Army Reserve's 443rd Civil Affairs Battalion in Warwick, R.I., for example, died of wounds sustained in Baghdad. Two members of the Kansas Army National Guard were killed in a car bombing in Baghdad.

National Guard and Reserve troops have played a prominent role in Iraq from the start of combat in 2003, and their numbers have grown in recent months. They now make up more than 40 percent of the U.S. force in Iraq. There is no information on how many are in Fallujah.

Among the active-duty soldiers killed in Fallujah was Command Sgt. Maj. Steven W. Faulkenburg, 45, of Huntingburg, Ind. He was the senior noncommissioned officer in the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. The Pentagon said he was struck by small-arms fire.

As of yesterday, at least 1,155 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Medical staff at a U.S. military hospital in southwest Germany are expanding bed capacity to care for scores of wounded from Iraq, including many from the assault on Fallujah, officials said yesterday.

A planeload with 53 wounded from Iraq arrived yesterday and another with 49 more was expected to arrive last night at Landstuhl, spokeswoman Marie Shaw said. On Wednesday, 64 wounded were brought in.

"We are very busy," Shaw said. "We have seen an increase of patient arrivals since the outbreak of the Fallujah conflict."

Shaw said she did not know how many of the wounded at Landstuhl were from Fallujah, because the hospital typically doesn't note such things specifically. "It's hard to tell," Shaw said. "We don't differentiate."

Landstuhl has long been a destination for wounded from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and usually treats between 30 and 50 injured military personnel a day, Shaw said.

Lt. Col. Richard Jordan, a physician at the hospital's Deployed Warrior Center that assesses incoming wounded after their six-hour plane trip, said the majority of injuries were "significant, but not major."

"We've had more cases of bullet wounds than usual, though some have also suffered blast wounds from rocket-propelled grenades," he said.

There were several intensive-care cases involving brain or spinal injuries or traumatic amputation of limbs, he said. Four such patients were brought in yesterday morning on the first plane and four more are expected from the second plane later in the day, he said.

The large number of wounded sent to Germany suggests that fighting may be more intense, at least in some areas, than the military had initially indicated.

Insurgents appear to be trying desperately to break open an escape route through the U.S.-Iraqi cordon closing off Fallujah's southern edge, commanders said. Some 15,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops are involved in the cordon and the assault inside the city.

Commanders said before the offensive that 1,200 to 3,000 fighters were believed holed up in the city. But the speed of the U.S. advance has led some officers on the ground to conclude that many guerrillas abandoned the city before the attack so they could fight elsewhere.

With the influx of refugees from Fallujah to Baghdad there also was an increase in violence in the capital, especially in western districts to where many have fled.

In Baghdad, a car bomb ripped through a crowded commercial street, killing 17 people, police said — the second deadly car bomb in the capital in as many days. People pulled bodies and bloodied survivors from the rubble. A dozen mangled vehicles burned after the blast went off on Saadoun Street, moments after a U.S. patrol passed.

On the west side of Baghdad there were gun fights in the Ghaziliya neighborhood and near the road to the airport.

Meanwhile, rebels have continued heavy attacks elsewhere in a campaign of violence meant to divert troops from Fallujah and show they can keep up the fight even if their strongest bastion falls.

Gunmen clashed with U.S. and Iraqi troops in the central towns of Samarra and Mushahdah. A car bomb targeted the governor of Kirkuk in the north, and gunmen attacked the police chief of the southern province of Babil — though both men escaped unharmed. Two more car bombs went off in the southern town of Hillah, wounding eight people.

In Mosul, guerrillas launched coordinated raids on police stations, political offices and other targets. U.S. and Iraqi forces were battling guerrillas hours later. Smoke was seen rising from several areas, and residents saw masked gunmen roaming the streets, setting police cars on fire. The local television station in Mosul, the country's third-largest city, went off the air.

In related developments:

Al Jazeera television aired a videotape yesterday showing what the station said was an American contractor of Lebanese origin held hostage in Iraq.

Video of the man, who carried a U.S. passport and an identification card in the name of Dean Sadek, was shown without any audio but quoted Sadek as saying all businesses should stop cooperating with U.S. authorities.

The kidnapping was claimed in the name of the 1920 Revolution Brigade, a reference to the uprising against the British after World War I.

The courts-martial of three U.S. soldiers over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners have been transferred from Baghdad to a base in the United States, the military said yesterday.

The trials of reservists Spc. Charles Graner, Sgt. Javal Davis and Spc. Sabrina Harman are now to be heard at Fort Hood in Texas, a military statement said.

Graner's trial is due to open Jan. 7 and Davis' on Feb. 1. No date has been set for Harman.

In all, seven military police and an intelligence soldier have been charged over the abuse of Iraqis at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison in late 2003, a scandal that outraged the world when photos of naked, hooded and bound prisoners being taunted and humiliated were published in April.

U.S.-led troops stormed a Sunni Muslim mosque in Baghdad yesterday and arrested Ibn Taymiya mosque's radical preacher Sheikh Mehdi al-Sumaidi, who has urged Iraqi forces not to fight alongside Americans attacking Fallujah.

U.S. troops also raided the homes of senior officials of the Muslim Clerics Association, an influential Sunni group that has urged Iraqis to boycott elections in protest over the assault on Fallujah.

The U.S. military will be involved in Iraq for one to three more years, retired Gen. Tommy Franks said yesterday.

Franks told a conference in Lisbon, Portugal, that when he launched the invasion last year he expected U.S. forces to be involved in Iraq for three to five years.

Compiled from The Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Knight Ridder Newspapers and Reuters reports.