CAPTAIN CHAOS. Convicted Killer. Casa de Muerte (House of Death).

With their names stencilled on their cannons, the tanks of the Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry — the regiment that General George Armstrong Custer led to annihilation at Little Big Horn — were spearheading the charge deep into guerrilla territory in southern Fallujah last night for what the US forces hope will be the Iraqi resistance’s last stand.

The area into which they were rolling is Hai al-Shuhada, or Martyrs’ District. The name is symbolic: the Iraqi and foreign fighters are determined to fight to the death, martyrs slain on the last day of the holy month of Ramadan. The American soldiers are intent on reclaiming the rebel city within days, killing every fighter they can find, and going home.

“We just want to get this over with in a few days, get in there and give it to them,” Staff Sergeant Coy Embry, 24, from Oklahoma, said. “By now anybody who’s left, you know they’re bad, they gotta be.”

The American commanders believe that their bold first strike on Monday into the guerrilla heartland of Jolan, in northwestern Fallujah, threw the insurgents off balance, and the stream of Marines and Iraqi infantry that followed, clearing streets in bloody house-to-house fighting, denied them the opportunity to recuperate. They think that the rebels fell back to the winding alleys of Hai al-Shuhada instead.

This battle was expected to be even more intense than that provoked by the initial American push. With a second task force of 4,000 Marines and US soldiers sweeping towards them from the north east, the guerrillas have nowhere to go.

The US forces were confident that they could meet a self-imposed 72-hour deadline to break the insurgents in the southern districts, a victory that commanders expect to open the way to a 30-day mopping-up period, searching for any rebels still holding out.

“They have rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s, but all that does is piss us off,” said Sergeant Embry, head of a crew of cavalry “dismount” soldiers riding into battle in the back of an armoured vehicle. Several vehicles have been hit by rockets that ripped into their armour plating, but so far without disabling the massive machines.

Until last night no US forces had entered the southern half of the city, which was pounded by artillery and mortar fire before the armoured column rumbled in, moving slowly and scanning the streets for huge mines buried in the road — the only hope the guerrillas have of delaying their progress.

So far, despite intense fighting, the Americans have not had to face an organised resistance, leading them to believe that rebel leaders fled Fallujah as soon as the army started mounting checkpoints around the city ahead of the attack. That has not dimmed the ferocity of the remaining die-hard fighters committed to killing as many US troops as they can before being killed themselves. And some groups have tried to attack the US cordon of steel around Fallujah from the outside, triggering pitched firefights.

Travelling by convoy from the US Marine base outside Fallujah back into the city, The Times witnessed an insurgent mortar squad blasting off rounds at a Marine rear post. The army convoy screeched to a halt on the northern bypass, training their heavy machineguns on the palm-lined hillock the insurgents fired from, then firing more than 1,000 rounds.

On the northern edge of the city, inside dusty tents, US commanders put the finishing touches to their battle plans as they used unmanned drones fitted with spy cameras to guide mortar fire on to vehicles in the al-Shuhada district, which may be rigged to explode once their men move in.

From their high-tech vantage point, they also destroyed a house where armed men were spotted, and blew up a bus being loaded with explosives.

The Americans’ battle plan in the al-Shuhada district is simple: draw out the rebels and kill them before they can fire their weapons. They estimate that there are 200 to 300 rebels in the area “Maintain 360 degree security,” Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Rainey, 39, the battalion commander, told his officers in his command tent strung between tracked vehicles in the dusty flats outside Fallujah. “Destroy everything you can destroy. Make sure you keep together.

“The Marines are having a tough fight. I don’t want them to have a catastrophic fight. Those roadside bombs, car bombs, IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and 55-gallon drums, those kids can’t see that. So pound those roads,” he instructed his men.

Fallujah, blacked-out since the onslaught began, was under a strict night-time shoot-to-kill curfew. Anyone spotted in the soldiers’ night-vision sights would be shot.

Outside in the fierce November sun, Colonel Rainey’s men idled away the time before the attack, reading, sleeping and shaving in broken wing mirrors of their Humvees.

FALLUJAH TOLL

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