American Planes Hit Fallujah
U.S. warplanes hammered suspected militant strongholds in Fallujah on Wednesday after a suicide bombing there and a series of attacks in Baghdad pushed the number of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq campaign past 1,000.
Sporadic explosions lit the sky throughout the night and several buildings were razed to the ground. Hospital officials said at least six people were killed and 11 wounded since the strikes began late Tuesday in Fallujah, a hotbed of Sunni insurgents, witnesses said.
Commenting on the U.S. death toll, President Bush said Wednesday "we mourn every loss of life" and declared that the United States was making good progress in the war against terrorism.
"We're still at war," Mr. Bush said during a meeting with congressional leaders. "We've got to do everything we can to protect the homeland."
In other developments:
Wednesday's airstrikes targeted a militant "command and control headquarters that has recently been coordinating attacks" against coalition forces, the military said.
Late Tuesday, U.S. jets dropped several bombs and tank and artillery units fired rounds into the city in retaliation for militant attacks on Marine positions outside the city, said Marine spokesman Lt. Col. T.V. Johnson.
Johnson said in a statement that "significant numbers of enemy fighters (up to 100) are estimated to have been killed" by Tuesday's shelling. The claim could not be verified, and Johnson acknowledged that U.S. forces have not entered the city of Fallujah itself.
The military said it had no information about casualties from Wednesday's strikes.
U.S. forces pulled out of Fallujah after ending a three-week siege in April following the killing of four American security contractors in the city. But stiff resistance and political backlash forced the Americans to abandon the siege, and the militants emerged stronger than ever.
The guns fell silent Wednesday in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, however, a day after two soldiers were killed in fierce clashes with fighters loyal to rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles patrolled the streets Wednesday.
The return of calm came after al-Sadr's militia announced a unilateral cease-fire but warned it would fight back in self-defense.
Fighting with Sunni and Shiite insurgents killed eight Americans in the Baghdad area on Tuesday and Wednesday, pushing the American military death count to 1,002, according to the Pentagon. Three civilians, two working for the U.S. Army and one for the Air Force, have also died. Other civilians not in the military's employ are not reflected in the tally.
The death toll includes deaths from hostile and non-hostile causes since the United States launched the Iraq campaign in March 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein's regime. All but 138 of the U.S. deaths came after Mr. Bush's May 1, 2003 declaration of an end to major combat operations after Saddam fell.
In his comments, Mr. Bush said, "We're still on the offense here in this country. We're chasing down these killers overseas so we don't have to face them here at home."
"We're making good progress," the president said.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry said the United States joined the friends and relatives of those who died in mourning their loss.
"We must never forget the price they have paid. And we must meet our sacred obligation to all our troops to do all we can to make the right decisions in Iraq so that we can bring them home as soon as possible," Kerry said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, making the rounds of the morning network news shows, defended the U.S.-led war to topple Iraq's Saddam Hussein and urged patience as the wartorn nation struggles with an insurgency.
"We knew this would be a difficult time," Powell told the CBS News Early Show. "We said once the transition to Iraqi leadership took place, the insurgents would come after that leadership and come after us. And we'll have to deal with it and we will deal with it."
On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cited progress on several fronts in the Bush administration's global war on terrorism and said U.S. enemies should not underestimate the willingness of the American people and its coalition allies to suffer casualties in Iraq and elsewhere.
"The progress has prompted a backlash, in effect, from those who hope that at some point we might conclude that the pain and the cost of this fight isn't worth it," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference. "Well, our enemies have underestimated our country, our coalition. They have failed to understand the character of our people. And they certainly misread our commander in chief."
But Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged at the same briefing that insurgents controlled several areas in Iraq.
"There are places where we do not conduct patrols, we don't conduct joint patrols," Myers said. "But they're all going to be dealt with on priorities that are developed by the Iraqi government and by coalition forces."