"In Najaf we were welcomed by people, not like here," Mustafa said "They thought we came to support the U.S. forces. But the Iraqi forces came to liberate Fallujah from insurgents."
After a week of fighting, Mustafa said, Fallujah was in ruins. Houses were destroyed, buildings burned and bodies of insurgents scattered in the streets.
"Nothing in this city is like it was before," he said.
"Don't look to the destruction," a soldier standing next to Mustafa said. "Look at the future of the city without terrorists."
Mustafa's family in Baghdad did not know whether he had survived the battle. On Sunday, a day after Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, declared that Fallujah had been liberated, Mustafa was finally able to call home.
"Two or three more days and I will be among you," Mustafa told his mother. He called her on the first day of Eid, the Islamic feast following Ramadan, one of the holiest months in the Muslim calendar. "I will not celebrate Eid until you come back," his mother told him.
The Iraqi soldiers encountered the heaviest resistance in Jolan, Mustafa said, and that is where the most Iraqi soldiers were killed or wounded. The U.S. military said six Iraqi soldiers were killed and more than 40 were wounded in seven days of fighting. Mustafa said four of those killed were from his battalion, and that they died in Jolan. Earlier, U.S. commanders said more than 1,200 guerrillas had been killed.
The insurgents were both foreign and Iraqi, the soldiers said. The Iraqi army's 1st Battalion captured about 37 insurgents, mostly from Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia, they said.
"If we could control Fallujah and defeat the terrorists in the city, all Iraq will stabilize," Mustafa said. "I've seen nightmares for the last few days, all about the fighting in Fallujah, but when I think of the results, I feel better."
Mustafa said that after the city is secure, the 1st Battalion will head to the northern city of Mosul, where U.S. and Iraqi forces have been clashing with insurgents for the past several days.
"I think people there are waiting for us," Mustafa said.
He said he would never think about giving up now, not when his country needed him. "If I don't try and others don't, those rats will spread with their diseases," he said. "We have been silent enough."
