IRAQ: US and Iraqi forces have declared victory in Samarra where they battled hundreds of insurgents in the first step of a campaign to reclaim Iraq's rebel-held areas before national elections early next year.
But a day after the heaviest fighting ended in the town 60 miles north of Baghdad, Iraqi religious leaders condemned the assault and warned that other towns in the restive Sunni triangle would not fall so easily.
Around 3,000 US troops, backed by a 2,000-strong Iraqi force, stormed Samarra on Friday.
After initial heavy fighting the town's estimated 1,000 insurgents melted away, leaving American troops in charge of most of the town by yesterday evening.
"This has been a successful operation. . .We're very confident that the future of Samarra is good," Maj-Gen John Batiste, the commander of the US 1st Infantry Division, which led the assault on Samarra, said.
In 36 hours of fighting, the US military said it killed 125 guerrillas and seized 88.
However, clerics from the Association of Muslim Scholars, a leading Sunni group, called the campaign "barbarous."
"As usual the destruction has hit civilians. Women and children have been killed, houses destroyed," said Sheikh Muhammad Bashar al-Faidhi. "Next time there will be stronger resistance," he said.
Residents of the town said bodies had been left untended in the roads due to the fear of snipers.
Families who tried to bury their dead at the town's cemetery were blocked by US troops manning a tight cordon around the city.
The benchmark of success will come when US troops withdraw, leaving the town in the hands of a newly constituted Iraqi force.
In the past, local forces left unsupervised in the Sunni triangle have sided with the rebels.
Meanwhile, US warplanes have bombed a building on the outskirts of the rebel-held town of Fallujah, killing two people and wounding 10.
The strike, the third in just over 24 hours, severely damaged the targeted building, triggering a wave of secondary explosions that indicated ammunition had been stored inside, the army said in a statement.
Fallujah is often touted as the centre of Iraq's insurgency and may be the next town in line to be retaken by US-led forces after Samarra.