Fallujah 'Not Quite Secure'
Insurgent forces in Fallujah attacked U.S. Marines and Iraqi government forces from a house inside the city Thursday, killing one Marine and one Iraqi soldier, a Marine commander said.
Lt. Gen. John Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, told Defense Department reporters in a video teleconference from Fallujah that the city is not yet completely in U.S. and Iraqi government control.
"The town is not quite secure at this point," Sattler said.
He said the total U.S. death toll so far in the Fallujah offensive, which began Nov. 7, stands at 51, with about 425 wounded in action.
Sattler said city residents who fled before the U.S.-led offensive will not be allowed back until conditions are safer. He said the resettlement would be done in phases, starting with residences in the northern part of Fallujah.
Fallujah normally has a population of about 200,000. The vast majority fled before the fighting began.
"The town must be secure before we let the Fallujah people back in," he said. He gave no specific estimate of when that would happen, saying only that it would take "some time."
In other developments:
Condemnation of the apparent killing of kidnapped British aid worker Margaret Hassan continued to be heard.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Thursday a body found in the strife-torn Iraqi city of Fallujah was likely that of Hassan -- repeating the belief of British officials and Hassan's family.
"The body found in Fallujah appears to have been Margaret's and the video of the execution of a Western woman appears on all the available information to have been genuine," Howard told Parliament.
Howard did not say which body he was referring to but on Sunday, Marines found the mutilated body of what they believe was a Western woman on a street in Fallujah during the U.S. assault on the insurgent stronghold.
Hassan, 59, director of CARE International's operations in Iraq, was a British citizen born in Ireland and married to an Iraqi man.
The body, clothed in what appeared to be a purple, velour dress, was wrapped in a blanket, with a blood-soaked black cloth nearby. As of Thursday, the U.S. command said the body had not been identified.
When questioned outside Parliament about his comments, Howard did not confirm which body he was talking about and said no remains had been yet returned to authorities.
"This latest example of cruelty and brutality reminds us that there can be only one answer to terrorism and that is the completely uncompromising and unconditional one," he said.
The Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera said early this week it had received a videotape showing the murder of a woman believed to be Hassan, a British-Irish national who had lived in Iraq for three decades.