IRAQ: Guerrillas attacked the governor's office in Mosul yesterday, and there was bloodshed elsewhere in the north of Iraq as US forces wound down their offensive against the shattered rebel stronghold of Falluja.
The interim government declared the Falluja operation a success and held out the prospect of residents being able to return to the city within days, offering $100 cash to each family and compensation for damage to homes and businesses.
But while 10 days of fighting had deprived guerrilla groups of a safe haven, a spokesman for the Prime Minister, Mr Iyad Allawi, conceded that many rebels had dispersed, posing threats elsewhere that US and Iraqi authorities would still have to counter.
US Marine officers in Falluja, in a report leaked to the New York Times, warned of the "outstanding resilience" of an insurgency based around both former loyalists of Saddam Hussein and Islamists like the al-Qaeda ally, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Despite losing, by Iraqi estimates, up to 1,600 dead in Falluja, guerrillas would continue to disrupt efforts to set up reliable Iraqi security forces and to hold an election in late January, the Marine intelligence report was quoted as saying.
In the north, a bodyguard was killed and four wounded in the mortar attack on the governor's compound in Mosul, where Sunni insurgents caused mayhem during the US and Iraqi assault on Falluja. A US base in Mosul was also hit by mortars, and six Iraqis died in bombings in the northern oil towns of Baiji and Kirkuk. Another roadside bomb in Baghdad also killed an Iraqi. In Ramadi, another restive Sunni stronghold, US troops clashed with heavily-armed guerrillas for a second day.