Insurgent Base Discovered in Fallujah

U.S. Troops Find Ammunition, Written Orders in House Used by Zarqawi's Network

A Marine handcuffs an Iraqi in Fallujah, where the U.S. was battling insurgents in the city's south. (Thaier Al-sudani -- Reuters)

NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 18 -- U.S. soldiers discovered a house in southern Fallujah on Thursday believed by U.S. military officials to be a main headquarters for the network of the Jordanian guerrilla leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, whose group has claimed responsibility for numerous bombings, kidnappings and beheadings across Iraq.

A black and white mural painted on a wall in the house, similar to banners shown in videos that have depicted the beheadings of foreign hostages, indicated that the house belonged to an "al Qaeda organization." Zarqawi has declared his allegiance to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and his group, initially called Monotheism and Jihad, recently adopted the name al Qaeda in Iraq.

In the house, the soldiers found documents that translators described as letters written by Zarqawi to his lieutenants, medical supplies from the U.S. Agency for International Development and boxes of ammunition from the Chinese and Jordanian armies.

Controlled by insurgents from late April until this month, when American and Iraqi forces mounted a massive offensive aimed at restoring government authority, Fallujah had become a hub for foreign guerrillas who joined Zarqawi's network, U.S. military officials have said.

Military officials said it was unclear when, if ever, Zarqawi had been in the house discovered Thursday in Fallujah's southern neighborhood of Shuhada. A U.S. intelligence source said Zarqawi apparently did not use Fallujah as his base of operations, and none of the leaders of the principal insurgent groups based in Fallujah -- Zarqawi, Abdullah Janabi and Omar Hadid -- were known to have been apprehended during the U.S. offensive there. Janabi had said he and Hadid remained inside Fallujah, and U.S. military officials suggested that Zarqawi might be in the northern city of Mosul.

Fighting persisted Thursday in Mosul and a string of other towns stretching across the region north and west of Baghdad known as the Sunni Triangle.

In Mosul, where 2,500 U.S. troops entered Tuesday, insurgents attacked the governor's office, killing a bodyguard, and mortars were fired at a U.S. base. Bombings in the northern towns of Kirkuk and Baiji killed six Iraqis, news agencies reported, and clashes erupted again in Ramadi, a provincial capital west of Fallujah. Fighting has surged in Ramadi since U.S. troops began their Fallujah offensive last week.

In Baghdad, where a car bomb near a U.S. convoy killed two people, U.S. and allied Iraqi forces swept through a restive swath of the capital that runs along Haifa Street. The Interior Ministry said 104 suspects were arrested, including foreigners.

Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said Thursday that 51 U.S. troops and eight Iraqi soldiers had been killed in fighting in Fallujah and that 425 Americans and 40 Iraqi soldiers had been wounded. About 25 civilians were wounded and treated by U.S. military doctors, but no civilians were killed, Sattler said.

Marine and Army units continued on Thursday to clash with insurgents in Fallujah's Shuhada neighborhood. A Marine and an Iraqi soldier were killed in the fighting.

Uniformed, masked insurgents in Shuhada had attacked U.S. troops for several days with more than 15 rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and sniper fire. U.S. warplanes and artillery subsequently bombed the area, and U.S. soldiers and Iraqi security forces returned there to look through the rubble.

The house said to have been used by the Zarqawi network, a simple concrete structure, was discovered Thursday on a block that Army Maj. David Johnson described as a "one-stop shop for terrorists."

"That part of town is the most dangerous place on Earth," said Johnson, a historian attached to 1st Infantry Division's Task Force 2-2, which conducted the raid.

Johnson said soldiers discovered at least nine bodies dressed in military fatigues, including that of a Sudanese man.