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US troops reach centre of Fallujah as 48 killed in Baquba and Kirkuk

* Night-time curfew in Baghdad
* 16 US troops killed in two days
* Islamic party quits govt over Fallujah assault
* Kidnappers demand ransom for Filipino and American hostages

FALLUJAH: Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi on Tuesday imposed a night curfew in Baghdad as US troops with crack Iraqi soldiers surged into the heart of Fallujah in a hail of explosions and gunfire on the second day of the largest operation in Iraq since last year’s US-led war.

Insurgent attacks and clashes killed 45 people in the Iraqi city of Baquba on Tuesday, a hospital morgue official said.

“They are less than one kilometre from the centre (of Fallujah),” a high-ranking US military officer said. The fighting claimed three American lives — part of a surge in casualties that has killed 16 US troops in the past two days across Iraq. Casualty figures were unavailable from the city.

Black and white smoke plumed skyward as US artillery, warplanes and tanks pounded the rebel stronghold west of Baghdad, meeting minimal resistance, correspondents embedded with the American military said.

“As for casualties on the insurgents’ side I can tell you that they are dying. A lot of them are dying and this is a good thing,” said marine spokesman Lieutenant Lyle Gilbert.

The troops “faced resistance at the beginning but there is almost no resistance now,” a high-ranking US officer said.

In Washington, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the forces would fight to the end to retake the city, after a siege there in April left hundreds dead and ended in stalemate.

Iraq appointed on Tuesday the head of its forces in Fallujah as temporary military governor of the city. Major General Abdul Qader Mohan’s appointment was announced by interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s spokesman, Thaer al-Naqib.

Allawi declared a night-time curfew in Baghdad and its surroundings — the first in the capital for a year — to prevent the insurgents from opening up a “second front” to try to draw American forces away from Fallujah.

The latest American deaths over the last two days included three in Fallujah combat on Tuesday, two killed by mortars near the northern city of Mosul and 11 others who died on Monday, most of them as guerrillas launched a wave of attacks in Baghdad and southwest of Fallujah.

Guerrillas attacked three police stations and a river bridge in Baquba, 65km northeast of Baghdad, and fought gunbattles with Iraqi police and National Guards. Ahmed Fuad, in charge of the main morgue in Baquba, capital of Diyala province, said 32 people had been wounded, in addition to the 45 bodies he had received.

A leading Sunni Muslim political party pulled out of Iraq’s US-backed interim government on Tuesday in protest against the onslaught by American forces on the rebel-held city of Fallujah.

“The Iraqi Islamic Party has decided to withdraw from the government in protest against the attack on Fallujah that is harming the people,” said Mohsen Abdul Hamid, senior party official and member of Iraq’s provisional National Assembly.

In Baghdad, the influential Sunni clerics’ Association of Muslim Scholars called for a boycott of the elections, which it had threatened to do if Fallujah were attacked. The association’s director, Harith al-Dhari, said the Sunnis could not take part in an election held “over the corpses of those killed in Fallujah” and the “blood of the wounded.

A car bomb exploded at a big Iraqi National Guard base near the northern city of Kirkuk on Tuesday, killing three people and wounding two, the base commander said.

Major General Anwar Ibrahim, the Guard commander for Kirkuk province, said the casualties were workers who had been arriving at the base, 15 km northwest of Kirkuk.

Gunmen killed a Turkish driver in northern Iraq on Tuesday, police said.

Iraqi militants have demanded ransoms totalling about $20 million for an American and a Filipino abducted last week in Baghdad, Philippine Foreign Ministry officials said on Tuesday. agencies

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