US artillery pummelled Falluja today and troops hunted guerrillas still fighting days after Washington said its offensive had destroyed rebel control of the Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad.
Further north, where violence has surged since the US assault on Falluja began last Monday, 15 Iraqis were killed and 22 wounded in the oil refining town of Baiji. A suicide car bomber rammed a US convoy, prompting troops to open fire.
US officers in Falluja said Marines were "cleaning up" remaining Iraqi and foreign Islamists and Saddam Hussein loyalists, and Iraq's interim government said some 1,600 rebels lay dead in the rubble.
Mortar fire and heavy explosive rounds crashed on areas where insurgents were believed still to be holding out.
There was trouble elsewhere in the heartlands of the formerly dominant Sunni Muslim minority, where some fear an election due in January will hand national power to the Shi'ite majority.
After the bombing in Baiji, US troops fought insurgents and sealed off the oil refinery to protect it.
Witnesses said the bomb, which blew up in a market area near the city centre, damaged a US armoured vehicle and wounded some soldiers, prompting them to open fire.
A US military spokesman confirmed that a suicide bomber drove into a US convoy but had no information on casualties.
In Ramadi, just west of Falluja, nine Iraqis were killed and 15 wounded when US forces confronted large groups of rocket- and mortar-firing gunmen who fanned out through the streets, hospital officials and witnesses said.
Iraq's third city Mosul, another Sunni stronghold in the north, was quiet after days of clashes. But the road north from Baghdad remained dangerous and three Turkish truck drivers were killed in two ambushes, police said.