Second Battle of Fallujah
2004 CE.
Shown on the map at 33.350°, 43.783°.
The Second Battle of Fallujah, initially codenamed Operation Phantom Fury, Operation al-Fajr (Arabic: الفجر, lit. 'The Dawn') was an American-led offensive of the Iraq War that began on 7 November 2004 and lasted about six weeks. A joint military effort of the United States, the Iraqi Interim Government, and the United Kingdom, the battle was the war's first major engagement fought solely against the Iraqi insurgency, not the military forces of the Ba'athist Iraq government. Operation Phantom Fury took place seven months after the First Battle of Fallujah, an attempt to capture or kill insurgent elements involved in the 2004 Fallujah ambush that killed four employees of the private military contractor Blackwater. After that battle, control of the city was transferred to an Iraqi-run local security force, which began stockpiling weapons and building complex defenses. Led by the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army, the Second Battle of Fallujah was later described as "some of the heaviest urban combat Marines and Soldiers have been involved in since Huế City in Vietnam in 1968" and as the toughest battle the U.S. military has been in since the end of the Vietnam War.
Text from the Wikipedia article Second Battle of Fallujah, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.