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Reference

Falluja Archive Oct 2004

Falluja Table - April 22

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IBC Extracted Falluja News - April 22

News Source
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Author
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Title
New York Times
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EDWARD WONG
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BATTLE FOR FALLUJA ROUSES THE ANGER OF IRAQIS WEARY OF THE U.S. OCCUPATION
Specific incidents / deaths

 

Date killed?  
Total

 

Civilian / Fighter

 

Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

 

Date range?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis

More than anything else, Falluja has become a galvanizing battle, a symbol around which many Iraqis rally their anticolonial sentiments. Some say the fighting there exposes the lie of American justice by showing that the world's sole superpower is ready to avenge the killings and mutilation of four American security contractors by sending marines to shell and invade a city of 300,000 people.

...

People like Mr. Wakeel and Mr. Hussein are the kind of middle-class Iraqis that the Americans are relying on to help them rebuild the country, with livelihoods already rooted in the principles of free-market capitalism. Yet their sense of kinship with Iraqis in Falluja, Najaf and elsewhere runs deeper than any pull toward abstract notions of democracy offered by the Americans - notions that to them appear increasingly hypocritical given the reliance of the occupiers on overwhelming force as a means to an end.

"Four American people were killed in Falluja," said Omar Farouk, 35, the owner of a convenience store next to the electronics shop where Mr. Hussein works. "Because of that, 500 people were killed in Falluja. The message of the Americans is that 'we have the power.' Iraqis will never accept that."

...

The gap between the expectations of many Iraqis and the flagging abilities of the occupiers to improve conditions seems to have widened to a chasm. The occupiers are blamed for everything that goes wrong - British soldiers rushing to the scenes of the suicide bombings in Basra on Wednesday were pelted with stones.

...

"When they first came here, the Americans were smiling," he said. "You could go up to them and talk with them. But now you look at them and see that their faces are very grim. They think all of us are enemies."

Mr. Massoud suggested a solution.

"The Americans must withdraw and allow the United Nations to come and observe elections," he said. "But even if an international forces comes to Iraq, they must leave, too, as soon as their job is done."

US/military viewpoint

News Source
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Author
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Title
New York Times
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ERIC SCHMITT
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U.S. GENERAL AT FALLUJA WARNS A FULL ATTACK COULD COME SOON
Specific incidents / deaths

 

Date killed?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Cumulative deaths [and injuries] Intelligence analysts are using information from captured fighters and other sources to help pinpoint concentrations of insurgents. Even during the nominal cease-fire, with soldiers firing only when fired on, American officers say, 5 to 20 insurgents a day have been killed.
Date range? 9th-22nd?
Total 14 days x '5 to 20 insurgents' = 70 to 280
Civilian / Fighter 0/70-280
Selected info, comment, analysis

General Conway's comments came just hours after marines and insurgents traded machine-gun fire, mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades, the latest breach in a tattered truce that hangs over the city, 35 miles west of Baghdad.

US/military viewpoint

The top Marine Corps general in Iraq said Wednesday that an American attack against insurgents in Falluja was "inevitable" within days unless the militants there immediately surrendered their heavy weapons and ammunition, as called for in a peace deal.

The officer, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, said he could not confirm reports from Iraqi civic leaders involved in talks to end the standoff that insurgents were turning in mortars and other weapons to tribal sheiks and police stations, rather than at six American military collection points, because they feared Marine snipers.

The disarmament "hasn't happened yet, and I'm starting to get a little bit concerned that it might not, certainly in the volume that we want to see," General Conway said in an interview here at the headquarters of his First Marine Expeditionary Force, five miles east of Falluja, the embattled Sunni Muslim city that is the heart of the insurgency.

"There are X number of days left," said General Conway, avoiding an exact deadline. "In that period of time, we need to see some distinctive cooperation on the part of the Iraqis inside the city to disarm. If that doesn't happen, it's inevitable that we'll go in and attack those people."

...

Inside Falluja, senior military officers estimate, there are about 2,000 hard-core insurgents, including about 200 foreign fighters, mainly from Syria and Yemen; former members of the Iraqi Special Republican Guard and security services; Islamic fighters; and former members of the Fedayeen militia.

...

"We'd rather take on a small number of foreign fighters than the entirety of the city, including several thousand young Iraqi men," General Conway said. "We will take this city. But we don't have to do it that way, and we don't want to do that."

News Source
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Author
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Title
Associated Press
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2:46 PM (UK)
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SAMIR YACOUB
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576 IRAQI INSURGENTS SAID KILLED IN APRIL
Specific incidents / deaths  
Date killed?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

The Iraqi health minister said Thursday that 576 Iraqi insurgents and civilians had died during the sharp upturn in violence since April 1 that has also taken the lives of at least 100 U.S. soldiers.

Health Minister Khudayer Abbas's nationwide compilation of deaths since April 1 was sharply lower than a U.S. military estimate of about 1,000 insurgents killed and about half The Associated Press tally of 1,170 killed based on statements from hospital officials, police and the U.S. military.

Abbas said 271 Iraqis had been killed in Fallujah since the Marine siege began on April 5. Iraqi doctors in the city had given a higher figure of 600 killed, Abbas said, because they had been pressured by insurgents to provide exaggerated claims for political reasons.

The minister said he did not know how many were civilians. An official in the ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 19 percent of the dead were women and children.

...

The director of Fallujah General Hospital, Rafie al-Issawi, told AP on April 11 that more than 600 Iraqis had been killed up to that point in the capital, most of them civilians. He said that count was based on records gathered from the main hospital and four clinics in the city.

Also on that date, an AP reporter visited one of two football fields where dead were being buried in Fallujah. Freshly dug graves covered an area about 30 yards wide and 100 yards long, and gravediggers at the site said more than 300 bodies had been interred there.

Abbas told AP on Thursday that the death figures in Fallujah "were exaggerated for political factors. There was some parties and elements who were pressing on the people working in Fallujah hospitals to present exaggerated numbers."

Date range? 5th-22nd?
Total 271
Civilian / Fighter 51/220
'19% civilians'
Selected info, comment, analysis  
US/military viewpoint

U.S. military and coalition officials have cast doubt on the higher death toll from the Fallujah hospital, saying it came through the "filter of propaganda" and insisting that Marines besieging the city have been precise in their fire to distinguish civilians from gunmen. But they said gunmen have used civilians as shields, putting them in the line of fire.

News Source
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Author
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Title
Agence France-Presse
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AT LEAST 68 KILLED IN CAR BOMB ATTACKS IN SOUTHERN IRAQ
Specific incidents / deaths  
Date killed?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]  
Date range?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis  
US/military viewpoint

A ceasefire agreement Monday mediated by civic leaders demanded the handover of heavy weapons and joint patrols in the town west of Baghdad, but the coalition warned that fighting could start at "short notice" if there was little progress.

Officials said the weapon handover had been "limited" and US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rated the chances of a negotiated solution to the standoff as "remote".

News Source
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Author
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Title
Albawaba
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US ARMY: 36 IRAQI FIGHTERS KILLED IN FALLUJAH; SPANISH CIVILIAN SHOT DEAD IN BAGHDAD
Specific incidents / deaths

36 Iraqis were killed during fierce fighting in the besieged Iraqi city of Fallujah, a US-led occupation statement said Thursday.

 

Date killed? 21st
Total 36
Civilian / Fighter 0/36
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]  
Date range?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis  
US/military viewpoint The fighting on Wednesday morning broke out when about 60 Iraqi fighters attacked US marines with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades in northwest Fallujah, the statement said. "Marines responded to the attacks with overwhelming small arms and mortar fire, as well as close-air support, killing 36 anti-Iraqi forces," said the statement.
News Source
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Author
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Title
Boston Globe
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Anne Barnard
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DEATH TOLL NEAR 500 IN FALLUJAH, BAGHDAD
Specific incidents / deaths  
Date killed?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

In the first detailed accounting of Iraqi casualties in the fighting that erupted across the country this month, officials at the Iraqi Ministry of Health said yesterday that 264 have been killed and 791 wounded in the Fallujah area since April 5, while in Baghdad another 235 have been killed and 832 wounded.

The health ministry's nationwide data also show that 12 percent of the Iraqis killed were women or children 15 years old or younger.

...

Media reports relying on figures compiled by a Fallujah hospital director have said that 600 Iraqis had been killed in the city -- more than twice the number tallied by the health ministry.

Dr. Shakir M. Al-Ainachi, director of the Ministry of Health's new emergency operations center, said he received his figures from the same doctor -- Dr. Rafa' Hayat al Issawi -- who was quoted by several media as saying casualties were as high as 600 dead.

The lower figures were later reported by a public health official who traveled from Ramadi to Fallujah to check documents and inspect graves, including those of people buried in a soccer field, Ainachi said.

"He was under a lot of pressure, political pressure," Ainachi said of Issawi. "You don't know who's standing behind the camera."

Death tolls from this month's fierce fighting across Iraq, especially in Fallujah, are a highly sensitive issue. Iraqis rallied around the people of Fallujah, sending supplies and vowing to fight with insurgents -- to a large degree in response to allegations from religious and political leaders that US Marines were slaughtering civilians in the city wholesale.

There was no way to verify the ministry's figures, and Ainachi acknowledged that his team's counts might not include combat deaths that were are never reported, as well as deaths that family members want to keep secret.

...

His statistics don't differentiate between insurgents and civilians. The vast majority of Iraqi casualties were men -- 80 percent of those killed and 90 percent of those wounded nationwide, Ainachi said.

...

Ainachi acknowledged that sometimes people are buried before their families get death certificates, particularly in the current chaos. He said the death toll might grow by 10 or 15 percent as families register their dead, as they are required to do to resolve inheritances and family law issues.

Date range? 5th-19th?
Total 264+ 26 to 40 = 290 to 304
('death toll might grow by 10 or 15 percent')
Civilian / Fighter (min) 35 to 37
12% 'women or children 15 years old or younger'
Selected info, comment, analysis

Ainachi's Operations Center at the health ministry headquarters -- a small room walled with maps of different cities, each with the latest tally of dead and wounded from that region written in red marker on it -- has been working only since the beginning of April.

The center compiles the data from reports it receives from Ministry of Health offices in all the provinces, based on hospital reports and death certificates. Its communications are rudimentary; it has a cellular phone, a satellite phone, and a land line, but some of the phones in the provinces don't work well and reports on paper are hand-delivered days late.

...

He also said the numbers are likely to overrepresent women and children. It's possible that some fighters did not come to the hospitals for fear of being captured or arrested, he said, even though he said doctors in Fallujah were generally committed to treating anyone and not asking any questions.

The center takes care not to count casualties twice when a person has registered at two hospitals -- a common mistake that has led to inflated casualty counts in the past, Ainachi said. He added that explosive devices caused more of the casualties than bullets.

US/military viewpoint

"In the history of warfare there has never been a more humane campaign than the one waged by coalition forces, started on March 19th of last year and through today, and that goes for the operations in Fallujah," General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Baghdad news conference last week.

His unusually passionate statement came in response to an Iraqi journalist who asked Myers: "Do you believe in the day of the judgment for the killing of those that happened in Fallujah?"

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