Sunni city a rebel base with troubled past
Known as a base for rebels loyal to Iraq's most wanted militant Abu Musab al-
Zarqawi if not a refuge for the one-legged Jordanian himself Fallujah has seethed with hostility toward US-led forces virtually since last year's invasion.
By striking at this city that has come to symbolise resistance in Iraq, the US-led forces and Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi are hoping to break the back of the insurgency so key elections can go ahead more peacefully in January.
A staunchly Sunni Muslim city, Fallujah fared relatively well under Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime.
Lying in the Euphrates valley alongside the main highway from Baghdad to neighbouring Jordan and Syria, residents made a living from trucking as well as farming.
But the city was hit hard by the dissolution of Saddam's armed forces after last year's invasion and many of its 300,000 inhabitants were left unemployed and disaffected.
On Monday, all males aged 15 to 50 were banned from entering or leaving the area, although US commanders estimated at least 80% of residents had already fled the city, which was left without power, water or hospital care ahead of the US-led operation dubbed "Phantom Fury".
The city has a long and bitter history with both the United States and its key ally Britain. It has painful memories of its time under British mandate in the 1920s and was also bombed during the 1991 Gulf war.
Overlooked, or perhaps avoided, during last year's invasion, the city's relations with the Americans deteriorated within weeks when US troops opened fire on protestors who demanded US soldiers not use a school as a base. At least 17 Iraqis were killed.
After a period of what passes for calm in Fallujah, new fighting was triggered a year later by the butchering of four US contractors on March 31. Their bodies were burnt and hacked and some strung up from a bridge, shocking the world.
A US assault that month ended in stalemate and, since then, the city has been transformed into a virtual theocratic enclave, governed by the Mujahedeen Council, a collection of hardline clerics headed by Sheikh Abdullah Junabi.
The council, which mediates and forms consensus among the rebel factions, has imposed a strict brand of Islamic law, where insurgents have publicly flogged people for "blasphemous behaviour" like drinking alcohol.
Since June, almost nightly US air strikes have flattened many of the city's buildings.
In recent weeks the city has been under siege as Mr Allawi insisted it hand over foreign fighters or allow Iraqi forces to do the job.
