The Second Battle of Fallujah was the bloodiest single engagement of the Iraq War and the fiercest urban combat U.S. forces faced since the Vietnam War.
Key Facts
- Start Date
- 7 November 2004
- Duration
- Approximately six weeks
- Codename
- Operation Phantom Fury / Operation al-Fajr
- Coalition participants
- United States, Iraqi Interim Government, United Kingdom
- Historical comparison
- Heaviest urban combat since Huế City, Vietnam, 1968
- Battle distinction
- Single bloodiest battle of the entire Iraq War
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
Seven months earlier, the First Battle of Fallujah ended inconclusively after an insurgent ambush killed four Blackwater contractors. Control of the city was handed to a local Iraqi security force, which then stockpiled weapons and constructed elaborate defensive fortifications, allowing the insurgency to entrench itself deeply within Fallujah.
Beginning on 7 November 2004, U.S. Marine Corps and Army units, alongside Iraqi Interim Government forces and British troops, launched a major combined assault on Fallujah. The operation was the first major engagement of the Iraq War fought solely against the Iraqi insurgency rather than the former Ba'athist military, and lasted approximately six weeks of intense urban combat.
The battle was subsequently described as the heaviest urban combat U.S. Marines and Soldiers had experienced since the Battle of Huế City in 1968, and the toughest engagement for U.S. forces since the end of the Vietnam War. It resulted in coalition forces retaking Fallujah from insurgent control, at significant human cost to all sides involved.
Belligerents & Mobilization Analysis
Side A
3 belligerents
Side B
1 belligerent