Second Battle of Fallujah

Second Battle of Fallujah, joint American, Iraqi, and British military campaign from November 7 to December 23, 2004, during the Iraq War that crushed the Islamic insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq, in the Sunni Muslim province of Al-Anbar. After the First Battle of Fallujah (April 4–May 1, 2004) left resistance fighters and foreign Muslim extremists in control of the city, the U.S.-led coalition decided to mount in November a follow-up campaign to retake the city to prevent a further spreading of the armed opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Fallujah was a stronghold of the deposed Saddam Hussein’s Baʿath Party, and after the First Battle of Fallujah, the city became a magnet for Iraqi resistance fighters and foreign Muslim volunteers. In November, the occupation forces decided to turn Fallujah into a trap where they would encircle the insurgents and destroy them. The city was surrounded with checkpoints to prevent insurgents from arriving or leaving. Realizing what was to come, 300,000 civilians fled the city. Intense shelling and air strikes pounded the city before an estimated 12,000 coalition assault troops, including six U.S. Marine and Army regiments, moved in on November 8.

The urban fighting was fierce, with concealed sniper positions and booby traps a severe danger. A great deal of destruction was caused by troops blowing holes in the walls of houses rather than risk a possibly booby-trapped door. After several days of street fighting, the city center was secured, but pockets of resistance endured for several weeks, each having to be reduced at a high cost in lives. The insurgents in Fallujah were largely destroyed, and the resistance never again challenged the coalition in open combat, but small-scale attacks across Iraq multiplied. After coalition forces withdrew from Iraq, however, Fallujah fell into militant hands again, this time fighters of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a predecessor organization of the Islamic State, among other groups.

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A History of War

The Second Battle of Fallujah was the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War. Some 110 coalition forces were killed and some 600 wounded in the battle; some 3,000 insurgents were killed or captured. An unknown number of civilians, estimated to be in the thousands, were also killed.

In the two battles of Fallujah, U.S. forces suffered 151 dead and more than 1,000 wounded, the greatest number of U.S. casualties since the Vietnam War, and by the end of 2004 more than 40 percent of the city of Fallujah lay in ruins, including dozens of mosques where insurgents had cached weapons and concentrated fighters.

In 2023, the U.S. Navy announced plans to name a future America-class landing helicopter assault ship the U.S.S. Fallujah to honour the fallen Marines of the two battles.