From the AFP and Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A United States tank company commander in Iraq says guerrillas are putting up a strong fight in the Jolan district of north-western Fallujah, a rebel stronghold.

US troops with crack Iraqi soldiers have surged towards 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 invasion.

Tank company commander Captain Robert Bodisch says troops are meeting fierce resistance.

“These people are hardcore,” Capt Bodisch told Reuters. “They are putting up a strong fight and I saw many of them on the street I was on.

“A man pulled out from behind a wall and fired an RPG at my tank. I have to get another tank to go back in there,” he added without giving details.

A high-ranking US officer has told AFP that troops have moved to less than one kilometre from the centre of Fallujah.

In a two-pronged assault, thousands of US troops poured into the Jolan neighbourhood and the Askari district in the north-east, where they took control of the city’s railway station overnight.

“The offensive is from north to south,” the high-ranking officer told AFP.

The troops “faced resistance at the beginning but there is almost no resistance now”, the officer said.
[…]
A smattering of specially trained Iraqi forces accompanied the marines, while many more were poised on the outskirts of the city, preparing to enter.

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From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A car bomb has exploded at an Iraqi National Guard base near the northern city of Kirkuk, killing three people and wounding two.

Major General Anwar Ibrahim, the Guard commander for Kirkuk province, says the casualties were workers who were arriving at the base, 15 kilometres north-west of Kirkuk.

From the AFP via The Australian :

At least 13 people were killed and about 60 injured when a car bomb exploded outside the emergency unit of one of Baghdad’s main hospitals, medical officials said today.

”We have received nine dead - seven policemen, one nurse amd a member of the personnel department at the hospital as well as 42 injured,” Dr Hadi Abdel Karim said at the Yarmuk hospital in the south-west of Baghdad where the attack occurred late yesterday.

The capital’s City Hospital received another four dead and 14 wounded, a doctor there said.

Scores of cars were destroyed when a stolen police car laden with explosives exploded outside Yarmuk, severely damaging the front of the emergency unit.

From the Washington Post :

In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld vowed that the assault on Fallujah would not be called off this time. “I cannot imagine that it would stop without being completed,” Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news conference.
[…]
Residents reported that a Saudi national known as Abu Waleed Saudi, a senior military aide to insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi’s, was killed in fighting west of Fallujah.
[…]
A few hours before the launch of the assault on Fallujah, called Operation Phantom Fury, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi visited Iraqi troops at their training base outside the city.

”The people of Fallujah have been taken hostage . . . and you need to free them from their grip,” Allawi told the soldiers. “Your job is to arrest the killers, but if you kill them, then so be it.”

“May they go to hell,” the soldiers shouted. “To hell will they go,” Allawi replied.

They’ve definitely been hanging round with US Marines too much…

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

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

Senior Iraqi Islamic Party official Mohsen Abdul Hamid, a member of Iraq’s provisional National Assembly, says the party has “decided to withdraw from the Government in protest against the attack on Fallujah that is harming the people”.
[…]
It is unclear what impact the withdrawal will have.

The party’s one Cabinet representative, Industry and Minerals Minister Hajem al-Hassani, says he will leave the party but not resign.

“I believe the fate of Iraq is more important than that of a political party and I will stay with the Government,” Mr Hassani said.

“I will withdraw from the Iraqi Islamic Party.”

The party will keep its four representatives on the 100-member National Assembly, a body created in August as a check on the activities of the interim Government.
[…]
The party, established in 1960, has strong ties to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and was suppressed under Saddam, who regarded it as too staunchly Islamic, prompting many of its members to flee the country.

Updating a previous post, from Reuters via the ABC :

Insurgent attacks and clashes have killed 45 people in the Iraqi city of Baquba.

Guerrillas attacked three police stations and a river bridge in the city, 65 kilometres north-east 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, says 32 people have been wounded in addition to the 45 bodies he has received.

“We have taken back the labour union building from the insurgents and we are regaining control of the city,” police Major Mohammed Ghani said.

Mr Fuad says 25 policemen were killed when gunmen attacked the Tahrir and Mafraq police stations in Baquba.

He says another 20 bodies came in after a similar attack on a police station in Buhriz, a village just south of Baquba.

Gunmen attacked a Diyala river bridge on a road linking Baquba with the north-eastern towns of Miqdadiya and Khanaqin.

They distributed leaflets warning people in Baquba to stay away from government offices and schools.

From Reuters via the ABC :

Residents of Fallujah say US planes have bombed a government clinic in the centre of the Iraqi city, causing an unknown number of casualties.

They say the one-storey Popular Clinic, which had been receiving wounded insurgents and civilians, was hit as US-led forces pressed into the rebel-held city.

The residents say it was impossible to reach the clinic because of heavy bombing and US tanks in the area.

The US military says it has no immediate information on any strike on the clinic.

US and Iraqi forces seized Fallujah’s main hospital, across the Euphrates River from the city centre, on Monday night, hours before the main offensive began.

Sami al-Jumaili, a doctor at the main Fallujah hospital who escaped arrest when it was taken, says the city is running out of medical supplies and only a few clinics remain open.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

An American soldier was shot dead while on patrol in eastern Baghdad and a soldier from Britain’s Black Watch battle group was killed in a bomb explosion south of the capital.

Deaths from car bombs were also reported in Ramadi and in Mosul in the north.