US warplanes pounded Fallujah today and American troops reinforced positions around the city in a battle targeting militants led by America's latest enemy in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said last week Fallujah must hand over Jordanian-born Zarqawi's group or face military action. The group kidnapped and beheaded Liverpool engerneer Kenneth Biley (62) and his two American colleagues.
Hospital officials reported casualties from the air strikes but said heavy fighting prevented ambulances from reaching them.
Residents said explosions and heavy gunfire accompanied clashes on the eastern edge of the city, which pitted US tanks against fighters with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.
US armoured personnel carriers and Humvee vehicles gathered on main road on Fallujah's outskirts, witnesses said.
Air strikes last night killed three people and wounded five, hospital sources said. Residents said dozens of houses had been damaged in eastern and western districts.
A US military statement said the warplanes targeted a checkpoint manned by Zarqawi fighters in the city's Jolan district after raids on Thursday hit two other checkpoints.
It said the latest raid was part of an intensive campaign against militants said to be using the Sunni Muslim bastion west of Baghdad as a base to plan suicide bombings and kidnappings.
Residents say civilians are the main casualties of frequent US air strikes aimed at smashing Zarqawi's suspected network.
US ground forces have thrown what the military calls a "dynamic cordon" around the city. Residents said a new US checkpoint at Falluja's northern entrance was preventing people from entering or leaving the city of 300,000.
Fallujah has effectively been in insurgent hands since Washington called off an assault on the city in April after fierce fighting and a high civilian death toll.
Meanwhile, two US soldiers were killed and two wounded when two US helicopters crashed in southwest Baghdad last night. The military said the cause of the crash was being investigated.
A roadside bomb wounded a British civilian and his Iraqi driver in the southern city of Basra today, police said. The unidentified Briton works for a landmine clearance agency.
Iraqi National Guards raided buildings in the northern city of Kirkuk overnight and seized three people suspected of planning suicide attacks, along with caches of weapons and explosives, a guard officer, Major-General Anwar Amin, said.