FALLUJAH: The brutish street war in Fallujah has been a baptism of fire for today's US marines, experiencing a relentless form of urban strife unlike any they had ever known.

"Fallujah may be an exception in the kind of wars we have been engaged in, but it will be an interesting lesson," said Major Andrew Milburn of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, about the month-and-a-half of street-to-street fighting, dubbed operation al-Fajr, that kicked off on November 8.

The marines, a small lean force, compared to its far more bulky counterparts in the US military, has never before had a fight like the one it had on its hands in Fallujah, Milburn said.

The marines' closest model would have been the 1968 battle for Hue City in Vietnam when the marines seized the imperial city back from the Viet Cong. Nothing had prepared the marines for the fight in Fallujah, a community of 300,000 people, where all the urban terrain was hostile and insurgents had been ruling the roost for months.

Last summer, the marines battled the Shia militia, the Mehdi Army, in Najaf, but the fighting there was limited mainly to the city centre. Even now, with the marines in charge of the city for five weeks, they continue to battle deadly pockets of resistance.

"My biggest surprise in Fallujah was that here we have a highly technologically developed army, fully trained, with the latest equipment, but in the end it all comes down to four or five guys getting into a house to clear it, because the enemy knows what the risks are of staying outside," Milburn said.

But they have learned their lessons. "At the base, we are a foot mobile force, but here we use a lot of vehicles for patroling, which implies dismounting, clearing a line of houses and getting back in the vehicles again," said Major James McFarlane.

The biggest innovation has been the integration of the M1-Abraham tank into the battle plan. "Before the tanks were seen as a burden for the marines troops, but in Fallujah they have proved how useful they can be to support the infantry, even in an urban environment," said Captain Robert Bodisch.

In Fallujah "we did a lot of gate opening or walls breaching, we have used our main gun, to breach big holes in houses' walls." The tanks are aided by the soldiers on the ground who can spot the assailant hiding on a corner, in a window, or balcony ready to shoot an anti-tank rocket, he said.

Artillery fire has been another plus, used to decimate enemy positions before ground troops advance. "It's a very accurate weapon, we can put a round exactly where the troops on the ground need it.

It can target a particular house, for example we used it in Fallujah to kill snipers lying on rooftops," said Staff Sergeant Josh Hemmett. "We've shot over 3,000 rounds in the past three months, and half of these were on the city." -AFP