Operation Phantom Fury: Encyclopedia II - Operation Phantom Fury - Aftermath of the battle

Operation Phantom Fury - Aftermath of the battle

The city suffered extensive damage. Before the war, it was estimated that the city had 200 mosques. Some claim 60 of these had been destroyed in the fighting. Perhaps half the homes suffered at least some damage. About 7000 to 10000 of the roughly 50,000 buildings in the town are estimated to have been destroyed in the offensive ([3], [4]), and half to two-thirds of the buildings have suffered notable damage.

News reports indicate 71 Americans were killed in the fighting. Iraqi casualty figures are unreliable as an unknown number of residents fled before the fighting. Some reports indicate that 1,200 insurgents were killed and another 1,000 captured. Also the Iraqi military suffered eight soldiers killed and 43 wounded.

Pre-offensive inhabitant figures are unreliable; the nominal population was assumed to have been 200,000-350,000. Thus, over 150,000 individuals are still living as internally displaced persons elsewhere in Iraq.

Residents were allowed to return in mid-December after undergoing biometric identification, provided they wear their ID cards all the time. Reconstruction is only progressing slowly and mainly consists of clearing rubble from heavily-damaged areas and reestablishing basic utilities. This is also due to the fact that only 10% of the pre-offensive inhabitants had returned as of mid-January, and only 30% as of the end of March 2005 [5].

Since the US military operation of November 2004, the number of insurgent attacks has gradually increased in and around the city, and although news reports are often few and far between, several reports of IED attacks on Iraqi troops have been reported in the press. Most notable of these attacks, was a suicide car bomb attack on 23 June 2005 on a convoy that killed 6 Marines. Thirteen other Marines were injured in the attack.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Aftermath of the battle", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki