U.S. forces fight insurgents across Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. and Iraqi forces fought deadly battles with insurgents across central and northern Iraq on Monday. The worst reported fighting took place in Baqouba, where the military said at least 20 insurgents were killed. Militants hit at least four different U.S. troop convoys with car bombs, wounding nine Americans in and around the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi and in the northern city of Mosul.\nA recording purported to be from Iraq's most feared terror leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, instructed insurgents across Iraq to attack U.S. forces before the military can move on other guerrilla strongholds after Fallujah.\n"If (the U.S. military) finishes Fallujah, it will move in your direction. Beware and deny it the chance to carry out this plan," said the speaker on the recording, posted on the Web.\nThe speaker, who was identified in the message as al-Zarqawi and whose voice resembled that of the Jordanian militant, said the Americans were overextended and "cannot expand" their operations.\n"Shower them with rockets and mortars and cut all the supply routes," he urged. The authenticity of the tape could not be confirmed immediately.\nA convoy of ambulances and relief supplies trying to enter Fallujah was forced to turn back because the fighting made it too dangerous, the head of the Iraqi Red Crescent said. The Red Crescent and Red Cross have been unable to gain access to people inside Fallujah during more than a week of violence.\nIraq's interior minister declared victory in the offensive. "Fallujah is no more a safe haven for the terrorists and killers. This thing is over," Falah Hassan al-Naqib told reporters in Baghdad.\nPrime Minister Ayad Allawi said the leader of a militant group behind the killing of some foreign hostages had been captured. Moayad Ahmed Yasseen, leader of the group Muhammad's Army, was captured along with some of his followers, Allawi said. He did not say in what kidnappings the group has been involved.\nAllawi's office confirmed that two of his female relatives who were kidnapped last week have been released. Allawi's cousin, Ghazi Allawi, 75, his cousin's wife and his cousin's pregnant daughter-in-law were abducted at gunpoint last Tuesday in Baghdad. There was no word on the cousin.\nOn Sunday, U.S. Marines found the disemboweled body of a Western woman wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket on a street in Fallujah. The woman could not be immediately identified, but the only Western women known to have been taken hostage are Briton Margaret Hassan, 59, director of CARE international in Iraq, and Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, a Polish-born longtime resident of Iraq.\nIn Baghdad after nightfall Monday, heavy explosions rocked the Green Zone. There were two huge plumes of smoke, and loudspeakers warned, "Take cover, take cover." There was no immediate word on the blasts' cause.\nOutside Fallujah, U.S. and Iraqi troops clashed with insurgents in several cities across a belt of central and northern Iraq, including Baqouba, Ramadi, Mosul and Suwayrah, south of Baghdad.\nIn Baqouba, insurgents attacked 1st Infantry Division soldiers with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire near a traffic circle and police station, officials said.\nDuring the fighting, U.S. troops came under fire from a mosque, the U.S. military said. Iraqi security stormed the mosque and found rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and other weapons and ammunition, the statement said.\nA U.S. military spokesman said at least 20 insurgents were killed, although battle reports were still being assessed.\nIn the neighboring town of Buhriz, militants killed the town police chief, Lt. Gen Qassem Mohammed, in an attack on his house, officials said. During fighting in Buhriz and Baqouba, American aircraft dropped two 500-pound bombs on an insurgent position.\nMohammed Zayad of the Baqouba hospital said nine Iraqis were killed and 11 Iraqis were injured in the fighting. It was not clear to what extent his count overlapped with the U.S. count of 20 insurgents killed. Four 1st Infantry Division soldiers were wounded, although two of them returned to duty, the military said.\nGunmen carried out near-simultaneous attacks on a police station and an Iraqi National Guard headquarters in Suwayra, 25 miles south of Baghdad. The assault came after an attacker drove an explosives-laden car at the headquarters. Police shot the driver before he could detonate his bomb, police said.\nSeven Iraqi police and national guardsmen were killed in the Suwayrah fighting, including Maj. Hadi Refeidi, the director of the Suwayrah police station, officials said.\nThree near-simultaneous suicide car bombings targeted U.S. forces in the insurgent zone between Fallujah and Ramadi, the U.S. military said. In one, the bomber rammed into a Marine armored vehicle, wounding the four troops inside. The two other bombings caused no injuries.\nIn Mosul, where an uprising broke out last week in support of the Fallujah defenders, a suicide driver tried to ram his bomb-laden vehicle into a U.S. convoy, the military said. He missed but set off the explosives, wounding five soldiers, four of them slightly.\nThe week-old offensive in Fallujah, the city that came to symbolize resistance to the U.S.-led occupation, has left at least 38 American troops and six Iraqi soldiers dead. The number of U.S. troops wounded is now 275, though more than 60 have returned to duty. U.S. officials estimated more than 1,200 insurgents have been killed.\nThe offensive was intended to secure a vital insurgent-held city so that national elections can go ahead in January as scheduled.\nIraq's deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, told The Guardian newspaper in Britain that the insurgency could derail the plan to hold elections in January.\n"Holding free and fair elections on time is an obligation that we have undertaken towards the Iraqi people," Barham Salih was quoted as saying. But he added: "Nearer the time, the Iraqi government, the United Nations, the independent election commission and the national assembly will have to engage in a real and hard-headed dialogue to assess the situation."\nOn Monday, U.S. forces resumed heavy airstrikes and artillery fire, with warplanes making between 20 to 30 bombing sorties in Fallujah and surrounding areas. U.S. ground forces were trying to corner the remaining resistance in the city.\nExplosions sent flocks of white birds into the smoke-filled air, and from the banks of the Euphrates, the jackhammering of gunfire was heard.\nCol. Mike Schupp, the regimental commander leading Marines into battle, told Associated Press Television News on Monday that insurgents in southeastern sections of the city were not coming out to fight, but were laying in wait in groups of four or five inside buildings for U.S. forces searching house to house.\n"They're pretty die hard," Schupp said. In the city's southern districts, "the enemy has nowhere to run. ... Their backs are against the wall. This is their last ditch effort"