Second Battle of Fallujah

Second Battle of Fallujah
	Part of the Iraq War and the war on terror
	; U.S. Marines from Mike Battery, 4th Battalion, 14th Marines, firing an M198 howitzer from Camp Fallujah (November 2004)
Date	7 November – 23 December 2004; (1 month, 2 weeks and 2 days)
Location	Fallujah, Anbar Governorate, Iraq33°21′N 43°47′E / 33.350°N 43.783°E
Result	Coalition victory
Belligerents
United States; Iraq; United Kingdom	Al-Qaeda in Iraq; Islamic Army in Iraq; Ansar al-Sunnah; 1920 Revolution Brigades
Commanders and leaders
Keith J. Stalder; Richard F. Natonski; James Cowan	Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; Omar Husayn Hadid al-Muhammadi † (November 2004) ; Abdullah Shaddad †; Abdullah al-Janabi; Abu Ayyub al-Masri
Strength
10,500; 2,000; 850	≈3,700–4,000
Casualties and losses
95 killed, 560 wounded (54 killed, 425 wounded from 7–16 November); 8 killed, 43 wounded; 4 killed, 10 wounded	1,200–2,000 killed; 1,500 captured
	Civilian casualties:; 581–670 killed (Iraq Body Count); 800 killed (Red Cross)

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. It was the single bloodiest and fiercest battle of the entire conflict, including for American troops.