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By Associated PressAn estimated 1,000 insurgents are dead, but the most wanted - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - escapes.
FALLUJAH, Iraq - Army tanks and fighting vehicles began blasting their way into the last major rebel stronghold in Fallujah at sundown on Saturday after American warplanes and artillery had prepared the way with a savage barrage on the district.
Earlier in the afternoon, 10 separate plumes of smoke rose from southern Fallujah, as if etched against the desert sky, and probably exclaiming catastrophe for the insurgents.
"It's a broad attack against the entire southern front," said Col. Michael D. Formica, the Army commander in charge of the cordon effort around the city. "We're just pushing them against an anvil."
Mechanized units, mainly M1A2 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, have entered the district, called Shuhada, with their muzzles blazing, blowing apart buildings, rolling over barriers and confronting insurgents holed up in mosques and other refuges.
U.S. military officials said Saturday that American troops had now "occupied" the entire city of Fallujah and there were no more major concentrations of insurgents still fighting after nearly a week of intense urban combat.
Iraqi officials declared the operation to free Fallujah of militants was "accomplished" but acknowledged the two most wanted figures in the city - Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Sheik Abdullah al-Janabi - had escaped.
U.S. officers said, however, that resistance had not been entirely subdued and that it still could take several days of fighting to clear the final pockets.
The offensive against Fallujah killed at least 24 American troops and an estimated 1,000 insurgents, and rebel attacks elsewhere - especially in the northern city of Mosul - have forced the Americans to shift troops away from Fallujah.
Exploiting the redeployment, insurgents stepped up attacks in areas outside Fallujah, including a bombing that killed two Marines on the outskirts of the former rebel bastion 40 miles west of Baghdad.
Military activity also surged along the Euphrates River valley well to the north and west of Baghdad, with clashes reported in Qaim on the Syrian border and in Hit and Ramadi, nearer to the capital.
A series of thunderous explosions rocked central Baghdad after sunset Saturday, and sirens wailed in the fortified Green Zone, which houses major Iraqi government offices and the U.S. Embassy. There was no immediate explanation for the blasts, but the Ansar al-Sunnah Army later claimed responsibility for firing several rockets at the zone. The claim's authenticity could not be verified.
A car bomb exploded on the main road to Baghdad airport, and there was fighting near the Education Ministry in the heart of the capital.
Insurgents also attacked a military base outside Baghdad Saturday, killing one coalition soldier and wounding three others, the U.S. military said. The nationalities of the casualties weren't available.
Baghdad's international airport was ordered to remain closed to civilian traffic for a further 24 hours, according to government adviser Georges Sada.
At least four people were killed and 29 wounded, police said, during a U.S. airstrike on rebels and clashes Saturday in the Abu Ghraib suburb of western Baghdad. One Iraqi was killed and 10 wounded in fighting between U.S. troops and insurgents in the northern city of Tal Afar.
Flames and heavy black smoke were billowing after saboteurs attacked an oil pipeline north of Baghdad on Saturday night, witnesses said. The oil pipeline carries crude oil from Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad, to the Dora refinery in Baghdad.
Witnesses said insurgents have virtually controlled the town of Taji for the last several days, distributing leaflets warning people not to leave their houses or open their shops.
The drive against remaining insurgent holdouts in southern Fallujah was aimed at eradicating the last major concentration of fighters at the end of nearly a week of air and ground assaults.
As a prelude to the Saturday assault, a U.S. warplane dropped a 500-pound bomb on an insurgent tunnel network in the city, CNN embedded correspondent Jane Arraf reported.
Hospitals in Baghdad began receiving civilian casualties from the fighting in Fallujah. In Numaan General Hospital, a taxi driver, Farhan Khalaf, 45, stared at two bedridden sons who had been injured by shrapnel. Alaa, 11, was badly hit in the chest, and Nafe, 7, lost one of his legs.
"Everything was so quiet," Khalaf said with anguish in his voice. "Offices and shops were open, police were in the city. I didn't see anyone carrying guns. Now the Americans are shooting randomly at anything that moves.
"Our houses are completely deserted now," he said. "Look at that child. Does that child look like Zarqawi?"
U.S. and Iraqi forces also have begun moving against insurgent sympathizers among Iraq's hard-line Sunni religious leadership, arresting at least four prominent clerics and raiding offices of religious groups that had spoken out against the Fallujah assault.
U.S. officials said they hoped the latest attack would finish off the last pocket of significant resistance in Fallujah. Next was a planned house-to-house clearing operation to find booby traps, weapons and guerrillas still hiding in the rubble.
In Baghdad, Iraqi National Security Adviser Qassem Dawoud proclaimed the Fallujah assault - code-name Operation Al-Fajr, or "Dawn" - was "accomplished" except for mopping up "evil pockets which we are dealing with now."
Also in Baghdad, consequences of the battle for Fallujah rippled across the political landscape. A senior aide to Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has already led two uprisings against the Americans, said Saturday that al-Sadr would not take part in elections scheduled for January as long as "Iraqi cities are under attack." Drawing al-Sadr into the political process has been a major goal of the Americans and the interim Iraqi government.
As U.S. forces pressed their attacks in southern Fallujah, Marines in the northern districts were hunting for about a dozen insurgents dressed in Iraqi National Guard uniforms who were reportedly wandering the city streets.
"Any (Iraqi National Guard) or (Iraqi special forces) not seen with the Marines are to be considered hostile," Lt. Owen Boyce, 24, of Simsbury, Conn., told his men.
A four-vehicle convoy of the Iraqi Red Crescent carrying humanitarian assistance arrived in Fallujah after the Iraqi and American troops allowed it to pass.
In the southern city of Nasiriyah, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said he expected the operation in Fallujah to conclude by today with a "clear-cut" victory over the insurgents and the terrorists.
"We have captured their safe houses, where they killed people," Allawi said. "We have captured the masks they wore when they slaughtered and decapitated people."
Allawi, a Shiite Muslim, brushed aside suggestions the operation would create a backlash among the country's Sunni minority.
"There is no problem of Sunnis or Shiites," he said. "This is all Iraqis against the terrorists. We are going to keep on breaking their backs everywhere in Iraq. We are not going to allow them to win."
- Information from the New York Times was used in this report.