600 insurgents killed in Fallujah assault

US FORCES said yesterday that 600 insurgents had been killed in their ongoing assault on the city of Fallujah, but acknowledged success in the city won't break Iraq's insurgency.

Warplanes and artillery bombarded southern parts of Fallujah where troops were trying to squeeze Sunni fighters in a smaller cordon. There was no word on likely civilian casualties.

Elsewhere, a car bomb killed at least 17 people in Baghdad. Police said the blast had narrowly missed a US military convoy that passed by seconds before.

The explosion gouged a giant crater near Nasser Square on Saadoun Street, a densely populated commercial area with major hotels housing foreigners.

It was the latest in a wave of attacks that insurgents have unleashed this week, trying to divert US and Iraqi forces and show they can still wage their campaign of violence despite the Fallujah assault.

The car bomb was the second in as many days in the capital.

Huge plumes of black smoke rose in the air as a dozen mangled cars burned, and bystanders pulled bodies and bloodied survivors from the rubble.

"It is a tragedy, even non-Muslims would not do this to innocent people," said witness Zuhier Abbas, a former Iraqi army soldier.

He called on interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government to "press and use more deadly force against the terrorists".

In Mosul, where authorities announced a curfew a day earlier, insurgents attacked police stations, overwhelming police and forcing US and Iraqi troops to intervene and prompting the governor to seek police reinforcements from neighbouring provinces, the US military said.

Masked gunmen roamed the streets, setting police cars on fire and controlling some bridges. Police and US troops were not visible in those neighbourhoods.

A car bomb targeted the convoy of the governor of Kirkuk, who escaped, but a bystander was killed and 14 others were wounded.

The huge Fallujah campaign has also sent more than 210 wounded soldiers to the military's main hospital in Europe, the Landstuhl Regional Medical Centre in Germany.

The number of wounded sent to Germany suggests that fighting may be more intense - at least in some areas - than the military initially indicated. Only seriously wounded troops are flown to Landstuhl.

At least 13 US soldiers and marines have been killed so far in the Fallujah operation, according to military reports pieced together since Monday.

The military has been slow in releasing official, comprehensive reports, citing security.

Military officials warned that the figure of 600 insurgents killed in Fallujah was a rough estimate. Some 1,200 to 3,000 fighters were believed holed up in the city before the offensive.

Joint Chief of Staff Chairman General Richard Myers said yesterday that "hundreds and hundreds of insurgents" have been killed and captured.

The number of civilian casualties is not known.

Most of the city's 200,000-300,000 residents are thought to have fled.

The rest have been hunkered down in their homes without electricity during days of heavy barrages, with food supplies reported low.