Civilians seeking medical care were told through loudspeakers and leaflets to contact U.S. troops. In Geneva, the Baghdad spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Ahmed Rawi, said Monday an Iraqi Red Crescent convoy of four ambulances and four trucks carrying supplies reached Fallujah General Hospital on the city's outskirts, but was unable to go further.

The hospital itself was well-supplied because no patients or wounded people have been able to reach it from the embattled city, Rawi said.

"Regretfully, there was no patient in sight," he said.