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Desperate insurgents driven to distractions in other cities while those left behind in Fallujah try to get away

AP:

Insurgents tried to break through the U.S. cordon surrounding Fallujah on Thursday as American forces launched an offensive against concentrations of militants in the south of the city. Some 600 insurgents, 18 U.S. troops and five Iraqi soldiers have been killed in the four-day assault, the U.S. military said.

U.S. troops, meanwhile, went on the offensive Thursday in Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, after guerrilla attacks launched against police stations and bridges across the Tigris river in an apparent bid to relieve pressure on their trapped allies in Fallujah.

A U.S. official acknowledged it might take "some time" to secure the city, 220 miles to the north.

Elsewhere, a series of attacks throughout central Iraq underscored the nation's perilous security. In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded Thursday moments after a U.S. patrol passed on Saadoun Street, killing 17 bystanders and wounding 30. There were no U.S. casualties.

It appears that insurgents who may have slipped out of Fallujah are attriting themselves in futile actions around Iraq. The insurgents in Mosul will suffer the same fate as those in Fallujah. They will be destroyed. Meanwhile the Marines press on in Fallujah and Ramadi. The insurgents are really making it easier for US and Iraqi forces to eventually destroy them by spreading their attacks they are strong no where and will defeated in detail if they are not blowing themselves up trying to kill non combatants. The insurgents are really giving the US forces an opportunity to speed the pacification of the country. But, they had little choice. If they had stayed and fought in Fallujah they would have met the same end.