Fallujah left crushed and charred

By MICHAEL GEORGY and KIM SENGUPTA

After six days of intense combat against the Fallujah insurgents, United States warplanes, tanks and mortars have left a shattered landscape of gutted buildings, crushed cars and charred bodies.

A drive through the city shows a picture of utter destruction, with concrete houses flattened, mosques in ruins, telegraph poles down, power and phone lines hanging slack and rubble and human remains littering the empty streets.

The north-west Jolan district, once an insurgent stronghold, is a ghost town, the only sound the rumbling of tank tracks.

US Marines, accompanied by a Reuters correspondent, pointed their assault rifles down abandoned streets, past Fallujah's simple amusement park, now deserted. Four bloated and burned bodies lay on the main street, not far from US tanks and soldiers. The stench of the remains hung heavy in the air, mixing with the dust.

Another body lay stretched out on the next block, its head blown off.

Some bodies were so mutilated it was impossible to tell if they were civilians or militants, male or female.

Fallujah, regarded as a place with an independent streak where citizens even defied the former leader Saddam Hussein at times, seemed lifeless. The minarets of the city's dozens of mosques stood silent, no longer broadcasting the call to holy war.

Restaurant signs were covered in soot. Pavements were crushed by 60-tonne Abrams tanks, and rows of crumbling buildings stood on both sides of deserted streets.

Upmarket homes with garages looked as if they had been abandoned for years. Cars lay crushed in the middle of the street. Two Iraqis in one street desperately trying to salvage some of their smashed belongings were the only signs of life.

While US soldiers walked through neighbourhoods, their allies in the Iraqi forces casually moved along dusty streets past wires hanging down from gutted buildings. As a small convoy of Humvees moved back to position on the edge of the Jolan district, a rocket landed in the sand about 30m away, a reminder that militants were still out there somewhere, even if the city that harboured them has fallen.

Residents long without electricity or water had abandoned their homes and congregated in the centre of the city as the US forces advanced from all sides.

There was no sign of the guerrillas who had scribbled graffiti along the walls of the park, encouraging Fallujah's 300,000 residents to join a holy war against US-led troops. "Long live the mujahedin," read the graffiti.

- INDEPENDENT

Herald Feature: Iraq