First Fallujah, 2004

The battle, stage by stage

1. 31 March 2004

   Ambush on the main road

   Four American security contractors of Blackwater USA, escorting a convoy through Fallujah, are ambushed on the main road through the city. All four are killed; a crowd burns and mutilates the bodies and two are hung from the Old Bridge over the Euphrates — the steel span Marines called the 'Brooklyn Bridge'. The same morning five U.S. soldiers are killed by a roadside bomb outside the city. Marines of 2d Battalion, 1st Marines, who have held the Highway 10 cloverleaf on the city's eastern edge since 28 March, recover the remains with the help of local Iraqis — three that night and the fourth the next day. Washington and the coalition command promise an 'overwhelming' response; the 1st Marine Division's commanders, who favour raids against those responsible, are overruled.

2. 1–5 April 2004

   The cordon

   On 3 April Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez orders Operation Vigilant Resolve. Col. John Toolan's Regimental Combat Team 1 closes the ring: Lt. Col. Gregg Olson's 2/1 on the north, Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne's 1/5 on the east and south of the cloverleaf, the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion sweeping north and east for mortar and rocket teams, D Company of 1st LAR on Highway E1, and 2/2 blocking escape routes to the south while combat engineers and Seabees of NMCB 74 push a dirt berm round the southern edge. Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and police man seven inner checkpoints. From 0100 on 5 April the cordon is sealed, a curfew announced and the city's radio station taken over; many families leave, and military-age men are turned back.

3. 5–6 April 2004

   Into the Jolan and the Sin'a

   As the ICDC positions come under fire, most of the Iraqi troops meant to support the operation desert; a company of the Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion, mentored by U.S. Special Forces, stays and fights with 2/1. Olson's companies push into the Jolan, the old, tightly packed quarter in the north-west bend of the river, attacking south and south-east; Capt. Kyle Stoddard's Company F takes RPG and small-arms fire, and an AC-130 gunship works over the district through the night. On the other side of the city Byrne's 1/5 attacks west from south of the cloverleaf into the industrial Sin'a district. Insurgents fight from factories and houses in small groups, blocking streets with cars and buses.

4. 7–8 April 2004

   A third battalion; the mosque compound

   Lt. Col. Bryan McCoy's 3/4, brought in from RCT-7, enters the north-eastern corner of the city on 7 April and begins clearing west. In the industrial area Capt. Philip Treglia's Company A, 1/5, calls in a danger-close air strike. Insurgents fire from a mosque compound near Highway 10 — press reports name it the Abdul-Aziz al-Samarrai mosque — and Marines answer with a Hellfire missile and a bomb that breach its outer wall; the strike becomes one of the most disputed events of the battle, with reported death tolls ranging from none found to dozens. An Iraqi battalion of about 620 men ordered to join the fight refuses and falls apart.

5. 9 April 2004, noon

   The unilateral ceasefire

   Under heavy pressure from the Iraqi Governing Council, several of whose members threaten to resign, and with uprisings flaring in ar-Ramadi and among Moqtada al-Sadr's followers in the south, the coalition orders the Marines to suspend offensive operations at noon on 9 April to allow talks, aid convoys and the recovery of the dead and wounded. The Marines hold roughly a quarter of the city — the Jolan's northern blocks, the north-east corner and much of the industrial district — and are told to defend in place. The two main hospitals reopen. By one estimate several hundred Iraqis, many of them civilians, have already been killed.

6. 11–14 April 2004

   Fighting through the truce

   The ceasefire barely holds. On 11 April 3/4 and 1/5 resume limited attacks before being halted again, and Lt. Col. Giles Kyser's 2/2 moves onto the south-western outskirts and advances slowly north into the southern districts; firefights are frequent from 11 to 14 April. Insurgents probe the Marine lines daily; on 12 April a misdirected mortar mission kills two Marines and an interpreter at a schoolhouse position, and on 13 April another mosque used as a firing position is destroyed from the air.

7. 15–28 April 2004

   Stalemate: snipers and gunships

   Negotiations drag on while the city is divided: by 24 April 2/1 holds the north-west, 3/4 the north-east, 1/5 the south-east and 2/2 the south-west, each with a handful of tanks. Marine scout snipers on sandbagged rooftops dominate the open ground between the lines, and AC-130 gunships strike by night. On 26 April insurgents attack Company E, 2/1 (Capt. Douglas Zembiec) in the Jolan; Lance Cpl. Aaron Austin is killed holding a rooftop and is awarded the Silver Star. Air strikes on 27–28 April hit positions in the north of the city.

8. 30 April – 1 May 2004

   Hand-over to the 'Fallujah Brigade'

   A deal with local leaders creates the 'Fallujah Brigade', some 600 to 1,100 former Iraqi army soldiers under ex-general Jasim Mohammed Saleh (soon replaced by Muhammad Latif), answering to I MEF. On 30 April the Marines begin pulling back from the southern industrial zone to the outer cordon and the brigade takes over checkpoints; on 1 May Lt. Gen. James Conway hands it the remaining operations. U.S. losses are given as 27 killed (some studies give up to 39), with about 200 insurgents and an estimated 220 to 600 civilians killed. The brigade soon dissolves, its weapons reach the insurgents, and Fallujah becomes the insurgency's base in al-Anbar until the Marines return in November.