Iraq's national security adviser Qassem Dawoud said this afternoon the massive military operation to retake Fallujah "is accomplished" with about 1,000 insurgents killed and 200 captured.
"The Al-Fajr operation in Iraq is accomplished," he said. "What is left is evil pockets which we are dealing with now. The number of terrorists and Saddam loyalists killed has reached more than 1,000. As for the detainees, the number is 200 people."
However Dawoud said that Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Fallujah insurgent leader Abdullah al-Janabi "have escaped".
He also said about 90 per cent of Fallujah's residents had left the city before the Monday start of the mass ground assault.
Earlier today concern was expressed for civilians trapped in the city which has been under siege for six days.
"Conditions in Falluja are catastrophic," said Firdoos al-Abadi, spokeswoman for the Iraqi Red Crescent in Baghdad.
A four-truck convoy of relief supplies left the Iraqi capital for the Sunni Muslim city, even though the US military and Iraq's interim government have not accepted the Red Crescent's pleas for permission to enter the urban war zone.
"Our destination is Falluja. We know it is risky but this is our duty as a humanitarian society and as Iraqis," she said.
The trucks were carrying food, blankets, first-aid kits, medicine and a water purification unit from the Red Crescent, the International Committee of the Red Cross and UNICEF.
"We've had no contact with the Americans," Jamal al-Karbouli, the doctor in charge of the convoy, told Reuters, adding that the trucks would drive until troops stopped them.
"Then we'll try to talk to them, let them search the trucks to see we only have medicine, food and first aid," he said as the convoy began its eastward 50 km (32-mile) drive to Falluja.
The intense pressure on rebels in Falluja has enflamed resentment across the Sunni heartlands of central Iraq, where insurgents have launched a wave of attacks and bombings.
Iraqi national guards based near the Syrian border were ordered to move to the northern city of Mosul where insurgents have taken over streets and police stations since Wednesday.
The government fired the city's police chief after nine police stations fell into insurgent hands. Residents said gunmen roamed the streets today, with no sign of security forces.
The military says 22 US and 5 Iraqi troops have been killed and 170 US soldiers wounded in Falluja. It puts rebel losses at 600 dead, but has given no figures for the civilian toll in a city where medical services have come to a standstill.