BAGHDAD, 16 November 2004 — Heavy clashes broke out in towns across Iraq as US warplanes bombed Fallujah and ground troops hunted rebels in the city yesterday.

The US military claims it has taken full control of the city, but scattered pockets of resistance remain, particularly in southern parts. Large areas lie in ruins, devastated by the ferocity of the US military’s seven-day onslaught. Fallujah yesterday was the scene of bloated and decomposing bodies in the streets, smashed homes, ruined mosques and severed power and telephone lines.

“What you’re seeing now are some of the hard-liners. They seem to be better equipped than some of the earlier ones. We’ve seen flak jackets on some of them,” Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski told the BBC.

Iraq’s Red Crescent has sent seven truckloads of food and medicine to the city, but US forces blocked the aid convoy at Fallujah’s main hospital and said it could not enter.

Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has said he does not believe any civilians have been killed in the offensive, which has left 38 US soldiers, 6 Iraqi troops and more than 1,200 insurgents dead. But witness accounts appeared to contradict him.

A member of an Iraqi relief committee told Al-Jazeera television he saw 22 bodies buried in rubble in Fallujah’s northern Jolan district. “Of the 22 bodies, five were found in one house as well as two children whose ages did not exceed 15 and a man with an artificial leg,” Mohammed Farhan Awad said. “Some of the bodies we found had been eaten by stray dogs and cats.”

Jaish Chief Nabbed

Allawi said a group linked to Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi had been crushed and its leaders arrested during the offensive. “We have our hands on the group known as Jaish-e-Muhammad, its chief Muayyed Ahmed Yassin, alias Abu Ahmed. We have also arrested his lieutenants and the group’s command,” Allawi told Al-Arabiya television.

In the central city of Baquba, US forces launched airstrikes against insurgents who overran police stations and other areas, killing about 20 of them, the US military said.

Explosions and gunfire echoed across Baquba, 65 km northeast of the capital, as US and Iraqi forces battled to restore order after insurgents attacked a police station and US troops at a traffic circle. Another police station in the town of Buhriz, just south of Baquba, was also attacked.

US planes dropped two 500-pound bombs on Baquba after 15 rebels came in from outside the city and positioned themselves on a rooftop, set up road blocks and planted roadside bombs, US military spokesman Capt. Bill Coppernoll said.

Insurgents hijacked two ambulances during the unrest, a doctor said. He did not know what happened to their drivers.

Hundreds of people took to the streets in the northeast of the city, protesting against the US-backed local government and calling for US forces to leave Iraq.

In Mosul, US troops fought insurgents on the streets. Isolated pockets of fighting occurred mainly in the west and southwest of Mosul, 390 km north of Baghdad, the US military said. Two US soldiers were wounded in a car bomb attack on a convoy on the highway leading west from the city of two million. “I expect the next few days will bring some hard fighting,” US northern commander Brig. Gen. Carter Ham said in a statement. “The situation in Mosul is tense, but certainly not desperate.”

There was fighting in areas of Baghdad, in Baiji and in Ramadi, west of Fallujah, as well.

An oil storage tank at a pumping station on the main export pipeline to Turkey was blown up by insurgents. And a set of four oil wells west of the oil-producing city of Kirkuk, as well as a pipeline carrying oil from Kirkuk to Iraq’s major refinery at Baiji, were bombed and set ablaze.

— Additional input from agencies