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Operation phantom fury hell house9/7/2023 ![]() By early 2004 a myriad of insurgent and terrorist groups found a safe haven in Fallujah. That event began the city’s slow transition into a center of anti-Coalition sentiment and insurgent activity. A number of Iraqis were killed and wounded as a result, although the actual figures never became clear. On 28 April 2003 Soldiers from the 82d Airborne Division (82d ABN) shot into a crowd of Iraqis when a demonstration against the American presence turned violent. The city’s industrial area lay to the south of this highway.įallujah emerged as a flashpoint soon after the overthrow of the Saddam regime. Although Fallujans traveled primarily by the narrow roads and alleyways that separated the city’s dwellings, they also made use of several wider boulevards, the largest of which was Highway 10, the six-lane corridor that bisected the city from east to west. Concrete apartment buildings and two story houses, many with courtyard walls, dominated the geography of the city. ![]() Its approximately 250,000 inhabitants resided in a densely packed area of about 5 square miles. Known for both its large number of mosques and its support of the Baathist government during Saddam’s regime, the city sits on the Euphrates River 43 miles west of Baghdad in the Sunni Arab-dominated Al Anbar province. As a broad-based operation, AL FAJR included shaping actions that relied heavily on the use of IO, violent combined arms operations that defeated the insurgents in Fallujah, and stability operations that returned the city to normalcy and reasserted Iraqi authority.įallujah became a problem for the Coalition long before November 2004. ![]() AL FAJR came to epitomize the type of full spectrum operations the US military had gradually learned to conduct in response to the insurgency. This formidable force met the determined resistance of approximately 4,500 insurgents defending a fortified Fallujah that had been in their hands since April 2004. The decisive assault that began on 8 November was led by two US Marine Corps regimental combat teams, reinforced by two US Army mechanized battalions, multiple Iraqi Army battalions, and numerous fire support platforms. In terms of forces involved on both sides and intensity of combat, AL FAJR surpassed BATON ROUGE as the largest combat operation in Iraq since April 2003. The 1st Marine Division (1st MARDIV) planned the operation, originally called PHANTOM FURY, to free Fallujah from the grips of the insurgency and reestablish an enduring Iraqi governmental presence in the city in preparation for elections in January 2005. ![]() With this violent and rapid assault, Operation AL FAJR (“New Dawn” in Arabic) began. This quick and lethal advance disrupted insurgent command and control and forced enemy groups to seek refuge far from the marauding Army task forces. By midnight on that first day of the operation, the tanks and BFVs of two Army mechanized battalions had struck deep into the core of the city, eliminating insurgent positions with fire from the 120-mm main guns on the M1A2 Abrams tanks and the 25-mm chain guns on the BFVs. As this fire forced insurgent groups to seek cover, other US units approached the wall that surrounded the city and prepared to create two breaches through which American Soldiers and Marines would invade Fallujah and put an end to the insurgent regime there. At 1900 on 8 November 2004 the US forces massed on the northern edge of the city of Fallujah began pouring fire into buildings just inside the wall that surrounded the city. ![]()
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