BAGHDAD, Nov 13 (AFP) - A six-day battle to regain control of Fallujah has ended and there are just "malignant" pockets of resistance remaining, Iraq's national security advisor said on Saturday, while the US military said the operation was not yet over.
"Operation Fajr (Dawn) has been achieved and only the malignant pockets remain that we are dealing with through a clean-up operation," the Iraqi security chief, Qassem Daoud, told a news conference in Baghdad, adding that 1,000 insurgents had been killed.
In constrast to Daoud's comments, broadcast live on Iraqi television, US marine spokesman Lieutenant Lyle Gilbert said that the largest military offensive in Iraq since last year's invasion continued to rumble on.
"Military commanders and troops on the ground will make their determination (of when the battle is finished) and to this point that determination has not been made," he told AFP.
"We will continue to engage pockets of resistance in the city and eliminate them one-by-one until the job is done," Gilbert said.
Daoud also said that Al Qaeda frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and a top aide, who allegedly used Fallujah as an operating base, had made good their escape.
"Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and (leading cleric) Abdullah Junabi have fled... leaving their supporters to taste death," Daoud said, referring to the ringleaders of a group that has claimed some of the deadliest attacks in Iraq.
Daoud said that of the militants, "the number of killed has risen to more than 1,000 and we have arrested more than 200 so far."
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi approved the assault in a bid to retake control of Fallujah, which has come to symbolise the violent insurgency plaguing Iraq.
But many insurgents appear to have fled before battle commenced and are running riot across the country, particularly in the main northern city of Mosul, where US forces were called in to carry out air strikes on Thursday.
Masked gunmen have been seen securing banks and government buildings in the city of more than a million people, like Fallujah majority Sunni Muslim, in the absence of police.
"By attacking police stations and occupying the centre of a city for one hour or one-and-a-half hours, they are trying to create the impression that they are alleviating the pressure on Fallujah, that a state of chaos has been installed and the Iraqi cities are falling," said Daoud.
"We will crush, with all our strength, any element that brandishes weapons and parades in the streets," he declared.
"We believe that the offensive against Fallujah will have positive repercussions for the security and stability of the country."
In a two-wave barrage, US troops, backed by crack Iraqi soldiers, stormed Fallujah from north to south using superior numbers and firepower to seize strategic positions, including mosques and government buildings, before other units rolled in to sift through every house and alley.
The painstaking door-to-door, rooftop-to-rooftop "cleansing operation", designed to hunt down militants who fled a punishing torrent of air strikes and ground fire, moved into the south of Fallujah on Saturday, officers said.
Sweeps of rubble-strewn neighbourhoods in the north of the city earlier in the week uncovered a grisly underworld of hostage slaughterhouses, prisons and torture chambers, military officers said.
Surviving hostages have also been found, but only one has been a foreigner -- a Syrian driver who was abducted with two French journalists in August.
A marine staff sergeant, who deals with detainees, said it appeared as though a kidnapping squad used Fallujah to hold its captives.
"We broke a safe in one room and found a list of Iraqi hostages," he said.
"These guys have a kidnap squad, working outside Fallujah and bringing their victims to the city," he told AFP, without giving his name.
Just one-and-a-half days into the operation, marines found alive Mohammed al-Jundi, the Syrian driver who was kidnapped with French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, the staff sergeant said.
"I have no news of the French hostages, I have no news of foreign hostages, I have their names in mind," he added.
More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since April by different militant groups and many have been beheaded.

11/13/2004 18:40 GMT - AFP