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Troops thrust into heart of Fallujah

US helicopter shot down, 25 cops among 74 killed in attacks

Agencies, Baghdad
US troops with crack Iraqi soldiers surged into the heart of Fallujah yesterday in a hail of explosions and gunfire on the second day of the largest operation in Iraq since last year’s US-led war.
In the ongoing insurgency elsewhere, insurgent attacks and clashes killed 45 people in the Iraqi city of Baquba yesterday, a hospital morgue official said.
Guerrillas attacked three police stations and a river bridge in the city, 60km northeast of Baghdad, and fought gunbattles with Iraqi police and National Guards.
The attacks came as US-led forces were storming into the rebel stronghold of Falluja, west of Baghdad.
Ahmed Fuad, in charge of the main morgue in Baquba, capital of Diyala province, said 32 people had been wounded, in addition to the 45 bodies he had received.
"We have taken back the labor union building from the insurgents and we are regaining control of the city," police Major Mohammed Ghani told reporters.
Fuad said 25 policemen were killed when gunmen attacked the Tahrir and Mafraq police stations in Baquba. Another 20 bodies had come in after a similar attack on a police station in Buhriz, a village just south of Baquba, hesaid.
Gunmen attacked a Diyala river bridge on a road linking Baquba with the northeastern towns of Miqdadiya and Khanaqin.
They distributed leaflets warning people in Baquba to stay away from government offices and schools.
AFP said four attackers were killed and 14 people wounded in the ambush on two Iraqi police stations yesterday, while a suicide car bomb at a national guard base left at least two Iraqis dead, officials said.
At least two Iraqis were killed and several wounded yesterday in a suicide car bomb attack against a national guard base north of Kirkuk, the paramilitary unit's local com-mandersaid.
A suicide car bomber exploded his charge at the entrance of the Kaiwan base, 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Kirkuk, as he tried to force his way in, said Major General Anwar Hamad Amin.
TWo construction workers were killed and several other people wounded in the attack, he added.
And at least 13 oilier people were killed when a car bomb exploded outside the emergency unit of one of Baghdad's main hospitals late Monday.
"We have received nine dead -seven policemen, one nurse amd a member of the personnel department at the hospital as well as 42 injured," said Dr Hadi Abdel Karim at the Yarmuk hospital in the southwest of Baghdad where the attack occured.
The capital's City Hospital received another four dead and 14 wounded, said a doctor there, who asked to remain anonymous.
In Ramadi at least 14 people, including a British and a US soldier, were killed and more than 60 people wounded in attacks throughout Iraq Monday, officials said, as US-led forces stormed the rebel bastion of Fallujah.
At least three people were killed and 45 wounded when two suspected car bombs exploded within minutes of each other outside two Christian churches in southern Baghad, medics said.
Thousands of US and Iraqi troops poured in to Fallujah after Prime Minister Iyad Allawi authorised the all-out offensive to retake the Sunni Muslim city from rebels and restore order ahead of elections promised in January.,, .
Casualty figures were unavailable from the city, where estimates for the number of its 300,000-strong population who fled ahead of the long-threatened assault vary widely from 20 to 90 percent.
In Fallujah a US military helicopter had been shot down over the embattled Iraq city of Falluja yesterday, but US military denied.
"There was no Multi-National Force-Iraq helicopter shot down," it said in a statement.
A Reuters reporter in Falluja said earlier he had seen a US helicopter crash after being hit by a rocket Fie said the helicopter come down in the city’s Jolan district.
Black and white smoke plumed skyward as US artillery, warplanes and tanks pounded the rebel stronghold west of Baghdad, meeting minimal resistance, AFP correspondents embedded with the American military said.
The battle to reclaim the rebel enclave spread out through neighbourhoods and alleyways from the north towards the centre as marines knocked down walls, barged into houses or crouched outside.
"As for casualties on the insurgents' side I can tell you that they are dying. A lot of them are dying and this is a good thing," marine spokesman Lieutenant Lyle Gilbert told AFP
Sunni and Shia figures have condemned the assault, initially dubbed Phantom Fury but renamed Operation Dawn in deference to the Iraqi government, with one Sunni political party threatening to quit the government unless it was hal ted.
In* Washington, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the forces would fight to the end to retake the city, after a siege there in April left hundreds dead and ended in stalemate.
(AFR Reuters)