Iraq rebels hit back amid Falluja battles

US troops fought to crush resistance in the Iraqi city of Falluja yesterday, but rebels hit back with an armed rampage in Mosul and a car bomb that killed 17 people in a crowded Baghdad street.

Marines met little opposition in the former insurgent stronghold of Jolan, in northwest Falluja, where guerillas fired only one or two mortar rounds as tanks pushed through alleys, according to a Reuters reporter at the scene.

But a huge explosion sent a fireball into the sky after dark, the reporter said.

Marines had to call in four air strikes after taking heavy fire at their headquarters in central Falluja, the BBC reported. Its correspondent with the Marines said a rifle company had come under continuous fire when it pushed out of the base into the city on a house-to-house search for insurgents.

Jolan, a stronghold for Saddam Hussein loyalists, had seen some of the fiercest fighting of this week's US-led offensive in the Sunni Muslim city, 50 km west of Baghdad.

"Things are going, I think, as planned. We've got about 70 percent of the city under control," US General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CBS television.

Eighteen US and five Iraqi soldiers have died since the assault began on Monday and 69 US troops have been wounded, Falluja Marine commander Major General Richard Natonski said.

But planes ferried 178 seriously wounded soldiers from Iraq to the main US military hospital in Germany yesterday, joining 125 who arrived between Monday and Wednesday.

"This is one of our peak periods. We are very busy. It is more than we have seen in the last couple of months because we used to admit about 30 patients a day," hospital spokesman Marie Shaw said.

The US estimated 600 rebels have died in the Falluja offensive so far, but the figure had not been confirmed, spokesman Lieut.-Col. Steve Boylan said in Baghdad.

Rebels downed two US Cobra helicopters near Falluja yesterday, the military said. The pilots and crew were unhurt.

The assault has provoked an upsurge in violence elsewhere, as happened in April during an earlier failed US attempt to subdue Iraq's most rebellious city. The late morning car bomb that killed 17 people in central Baghdad also wounded at least 20, a police source said. And insurgents in the northern city of Mosul set police stations ablaze, stole weapons and brazenly roamed the streets.

Residents said Iraq's third largest city seemed to slide out of control as grenade blasts and gunfire rang through empty streets and smoke billowed from two burning police stations.

Rebels attacked Iraqi national guards controlling a bridge in the city centre, killing five of them, witnesses said.

A cameraman for Reuters filmed gunmen raiding weapons and flak jackets from a police station before setting it on fire.

The US military in a statement admitted local security forces had been overrun in several areas and said local authorities were doing all they could to restore order.

A photographer working for Reuters was shot in the leg. Doctors said one civilian had been killed and at least 25 wounded in the past two days of fighting.

Apparently responding to the Falluja offensive, insurgents have also staged attacks this week in the Sunni towns and cities of Samarra, Baiji, Baquba, Tikrit, Ramadi and parts of Baghdad.