FALLUJAH, November 15 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Discrediting Iraqi assertions that the Falujah offensive is over, US occupation troops launched new air strikes and artillery attacks on the resistance bastion early on Monday, November 15, and further denied aid convoys access to reach besieged local citizens.

“In the last 24 hours, multinational force aircraft flew several close air support missions, attacking anti-Iraqi forces in numerous buildings throughout the city,” the US military said in a statement.

"The tunnels connected a ring of facilities filled with weapons, an anti-aircraft artillery gun, bunk beds, a truck and a suspected weapons cache."

The US occupation forces took issue Sunday, November 14, with the interim Iraqi government, asserting that the “battle for Fallujah” was not over yet.

"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," US marines spokesman Lieutenant Lyle Gilbert told AFP.

"We will continue to engage pockets of resistance in the city and eliminate them one by one until the job is done."

Iraqi minister for national security affairs Qassem Dawood told a press conference on Saturday, November 13, that operations in Fallujah had come to an end with the killing of some 1,000 “insurgents”.

The invading troops have been fighting a tenacious enemy that has been hard to pin down.

The onslaught looked set to come at a heavy price for the US military as 38 American troops have been killed and up to 250 others evacuated to the US military hospital in the German city of Landstuhl so far, according to occupation estimates.

An Iraqi child injured in US offensive on Fallujah

The new US raids on the western Iraqi city come amid growing fears a humanitarian crisis is unfolding there especially after the US occupation forces denied aid teams access into the heart of the city.

The Iraqi Red Crescent appealed on Sunday, November 15, for the United Nations to help its convoys reach local citizens.

Abu Fahd, a member of the relief convoy, told Al-Jazeera: "The relief convoy wants to enter Fallujah town for humanitarian purposes only, to save women, children and elderly people".

US troops had directed the relief convoy, carrying emergency food, water and medical supplies into the Fallujah hospital on the outskirts of the town, away from the reach of local citizens.

"They are in the general hospital, but until now the Americans will not let them distribute medical supplies in the city," Red Crescent spokeswoman Fardous al- Ibadi told AFP.

Doctor Jamal Al-Karboulie, the Secretary General of the Iraqi Red Crescent "is negotiating with the Americans to let them distribute the supplies to the people," she added.

She maintained that civilians hiding in the Sunni city were dying of starvation and thirst and something must be done to help them.

Giving a hands-on experience, an Iraqi woman, who was forced to flee her native Fallujah, told IslamOnline.net on Saturday, November 13, that bodies of children and injured in the western Iraqi city were “deliberately” crushed by US tanks, describing the situation there as a “holocaust”.

“US occupation soldiers showed no mercy on the wounded, who were left stranded on the city’s streets,” the woman, who identified herself as Um Umar, told IOL.

She recalled how a US tank had rolled over the bleeding body of her nephew, crushing him to death.

Bursting into tears, Um Umar, who managed to escape the hell thanks to a group of foreign reporters, said the occupation troops have turned the situation there into a “holocaust that burnt men, women and children alive and reduced houses to rubble”.

"Trees and plans were also uprooted in their scorched earth operation."

US occupation forces have also targeted the injured, she added.

“When we tried to move out of the city, they took away my sick brother who is aged 50. None of the journalists could stop them from taking him away.”

The Iraqi eyewitness denied US allegations that Arab fighters are stationed in the city.

“I have not seen any non-Iraqis in the city. I have only seen mortar shells fired from El-Wehda district, away from our neighborhood, targeting US tanks.”

“They (US occupiers) claim they wanted to liberate us from the resistance men, but we realize that they want to take away and kill our sons and husbands.”