The shattered Fallujah city, Nov. 14, 2004.US military on Sunday released the latest casualties with 38 US troops killed and 275 wounded in Fallujah assault. (Xinhua/AFP photo)

The Iraqi interim government said on Saturday that over 1,000 insurgents were killed and 200 others captured in a US-Iraqi massive assault on Iraq's once rebel-held city of Fallujah.

"The Al-Fajr Operation (Operation Dawn) is accomplished and what is left is the pockets we are dealing with now," Iraqi national security advisor Qassim Dawood told a press conference inBaghdad.

The number of killed rebels has risen to more than 1,000 and about 200 others were detained, said the advisor, adding that the al-Qaida-linked militant Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi and Fallujah insurgent leader Abdullah al-Janabi have escaped.

The US military said Friday that 22 US and five Iraqi troops have been killed and more than 170 US soldiers wounded in the five-day offensives on Fallujah.

Meanwhile, TV reports continued to air footage of battles inside the city as the US forces said they needed another three days to complete the house-to-house search to secure the city.

Early on Saturday, the US marines told embedded reporters that they were controlling about 80 percent of the urban area, but fierce street battles were still raging and the martyr-style attacks were far from ending.

"We will continue to engage pockets of resistance in the city and eliminate them one-by-one until the job is done," US marines spokesman Lyle Gilbert said.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Saturday that the battle for the "Resistance Capital" of insurgents is not over.

"Needless to say there still will be pockets of resistance and areas that will be difficult, so I don't mean to suggest that it is concluded. It's not, to be sure," Rumsfeld said during a visit to Panama.

In addition, US military admitted that many fighters had moved to other cities from Fallujah before the all-out offensive startedon Monday.

An audio tape purportedly from Zarqawi said on Friday that a victory for the insurgents "will appear soon."

The speaker, who identified himself as Zarqawi, called upon fighters in other parts of Iraq to take up weapons and join Fallujah rebels to "burn the field under the invaders."

The authenticity of the tape, aired by the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite TV, could not be identified yet.

Zarqawi, with a bounty of 25 million US dollars on his head, remained the top wanted man in Iraq. The Iraqi interim government said he had escaped from Fallujah, "leaving his supporters to taste death."

The Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) warned on Saturday that Fallujah was witnessing a humanitarian disaster and in desperate need for international aid.

"There are diseases killing children, pregnant women aborted, old and wounded people dying in the streets ... bodies rotten in the streets, let alone the occupation of the main hospital and even the destruction of health clinics," Ferdus al-Ibadi, spokeswoman for the IRCS told Xinhua.

She said a convoy delivering necessities entered Fallujah late Saturday. The convoy sent by the IRCS comprised five trucks, threeambulances and a minibus carrying food and medical supplies, drinking water and more than 30 volunteers including doctors.

The convoy was earlier held up by US troops at a checkpoint outside Fallujah, arguing that the road was precarious.

In another development, US forces have dispatched troops from the battleground around Fallujah to the northern city of Mosul, which has partially fallen into hands of insurgents.

A battalion was sent to Mosul on Thursday, after dozens, if nothundreds, of fighters armed with machine guns and rocket launchersroamed in the streets of the third biggest city in Iraq, the US military said on Saturday.

TV reports said locals looted a former regime palace that once was used as a US military base in the city, but the reports were not confirmed by the US command.

"People have looted the palace after the American soldiers leftthe camp in it last night," said a correspondent with al-Jazeera, adding he saw the citizens loading their cars with the stuff earlySaturday.

US forces and Iraqi National Guards were called in after militants stormed nine police stations in Mosul on Thursday, seizing police vehicles and weapons, said the US military. Five National Guards and one US soldier were killed in clashes with theinsurgents.

At the same time, fresh violence broke out in Baquba, Tikrit, Ramadi and the capital city of Baghdad in what appeared to be the insurgents' efforts to open new fronts in Iraq.

"The resistance is controlling Mosul and all the cities to the west of Fallujah until the Syrian borders and that Baquba and Samarra shake in the attacks of the resistance," said Mohammed Bashar al-Faiydhi, a spokesman for the Muslim Cleric Association.