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Reference

Falluja Archive Oct 2004

Falluja Table - April 24

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IBC Extracted Falluja News - April 24

News Source
-
Author
-
Title
Guardian
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Rory McCarthy talks to survivors of the US forces' assault on Falluja
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UNEASY TRUCE IN THE CITY OF GHOSTS
Specific incidents / deaths

By the time Menem Latif Hussain returned to his house early in the afternoon on the third day of the battle for Falluja there was little he could do. In the driveway by the front gate lay the body of his son Wisam, 16.

The boy had suffered one injury, caused by a blow so powerful that the back of his skull had been torn away. It killed him instantly.

"He had been standing by the gate looking out. There had been bombing nearby. I don't know whether it was a shell or a sniper that hit him," said Mr Hussain.

"I gave my thanks to God, for he was a martyr. And then we buried him in the cemetery."

When they returned to the house later that afternoon they found Wisam's cousin Thair Ahmed, 18, was also missing. He had left that morning to cross town to check on his fiancee's family. Hours later the family retrieved the young man's body from where it lay in the street. He had been hit once, by a sniper's bullet through the heart, and he too died where he fell. By then it was too dangerous to reach the cemetery.

"We buried him in a patch of dirt ground. There was no choice. Later we will take out his body and bury him properly," said Mr Hussain, 41.

They were not the only deaths he saw that week. From his driveway he saw a girl aged 18 standing at the gate of a house opposite shot dead by a sniper's bullet. Her brother-in-law rushed to help her, and he too was shot dead, Mr Hussain said.

At another time a house at the end of his street suffered a direct hit from a powerful bomb. "We ran to the house because they were my friends. In the garden I saw three men had been sitting on a bench. They were all dead, they had been cut in half by the bomb. My wife went crazy," he said.

...

"Four houses in my block were destroyed. The house behind mine was hit with two rockets," said Mr Zaidan, who later fled with his family to Baghdad. "We didn't go out, but from my gate I could see fighters carrying their weapons in the street and fighting the Americans. I saw them being killed and I saw their bodies in the street."

On the Thursday marines called in an F-16 air strike on a community centre next to the Abdul Aziz al-Samarrai mosque, in the centre of city. Residents said up to 40 people were killed and the troops then spent another six hours fighting a gun battle at the site.

...

"We had a clinic with two operating rooms. It was the worst place in Iraq to deal with a patient," he said in his hospital in Baghdad. "There were many civilians, there were women. I saw one woman who was pregnant and there was shrapnel in her abdomen from a shell. Her baby died."

Date killed? 8th (Wisam and cousin); week of 5th-11th;
Total

1 (Wisam, 16-yr-old son of Menem Latif Hussain) + 1 (his cousin Thair Ahmed, 18) + 1 (18-yr-old girl by sniper) +1 (her brother-in-law trying to help her) +3 (men who had been sitting on a bench) +1 (unborn baby of woman hit by shrapnel) =8

Civilian / Fighter

8/0

Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

The battle has taken a horrific toll. Doctors in Falluja say up to 600 people have died.

...

Doctors said the Iraqi death toll in the first three or four days had climbed above 300.

Doctors in the city said most of the dead were civilians, among them women and children. US commanders have refused to accept this, continuing to insist their targeting is precise.

Date range? 5th-8th/9th; and later
Total 300; later 'up to' 600
Civilian / Fighter doctors: 'most of the dead were civilians' - but 'US commanders have refused to accept this'
Selected info, comment, analysis

"We are peaceful people and they came and bombed us," Mr Hussain said yesterday. "From the start of the war it was just like hell. Why did they come and kill our sons?"

...

Inside Falluja, a city of 300,000, the marines prevented access to the city's only hospital for more than two weeks. Dozens of houses were destroyed, mosques were bombed and clerics turned a football ground beside the Euphrates into a crude cemetery
.

Three weeks on, it is still almost impossible to get an independent account of the fighting. Access to the city is severely restricted: the marines still hold a cordon around Falluja, and much of the city and many surrounding villages are crawling with Iraqi resistance fighters.

But in interviews with the Guardian in Baghdad, more than a dozen civilians, doctors, clerics and politicians have begun to piece together the US military's bloodiest battle in Iraq.

On the day that Wisam and Thair died, a US general in Baghdad said the aim of the new combat in Falluja, codenamed Operation Vigilant Resolve, was to "take the fight to the enemy".

...

The city's main hospital, on the western bank of the Euphrates, was closed by the marines. Ibrahim Younis, the Iraq emergency coordinator for M�decins sans Fronti�res, said that meant many wounded had died because of inadequate healthcare.

"The Americans put a sniper position on top of the hospital's water tower and had troops in the single-storey building," said Mr Younis, who visited Falluja during the fighting two weeks ago. "The hospital had four operating theatres, which could no longer be used. If they had been working, it would have saved many lives."

He said MSF wanted an independent inquiry to determine why the US military used the hospital as a military position - a violation of the Geneva convention.


US/military viewpoint

"What I think you will find is 95% of those were military age males that were killed in the fighting," Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne, of the US marines, said during the fighting. "The marines are trained to be precise in their firepower."

News Source
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Author
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Title
Agence France-Presse
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Paul Peachey
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AT LEAST 32 KILLED, NEARLY 60 INJURED IN ANOTHER DAY OF VIOLENCE IN IRAQ
Specific incidents / deaths

The dead included a two-year-old Iraqi girl in the city of Fallujah, the scene this month of the fiercest fighting between militiamen and US troops since the US-led invasion of the country in March last year.

...

Scores of US troops have died at Fallujah, where the two-year-old was killed and six more people wounded when shelling and gunfire hit their house, according to a relative and a nurse.

"We were in our house when three shells fell on the neighborhood, including one that hit the first floor and went through to the ground floor before exploding," said Hanan Abdel Baki, 27, herself wounded.

"We came out of the rubble with my brother and his son, Mortada, who died of a shrapnel wound to the neck, and my two daughters."

Date killed? 24th
Total 1 (2-month-old girl) +1 (Mortada, nephew of Hanan Abdel Baki) = 2
Civilian / Fighter 2/0
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]  
Date range?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis  
US/military viewpoint  
News Source
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Author
-
Title
Information Clearing House
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Donna Mulhearn
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TWO MORE BULLETS
Specific incidents / deaths  
Date killed?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]  
Date range?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis

I had been shot at, not once, but twice by American soldiers after politely asking permission to transport aid to a hospital.

...

But the clinic had no disinfectant, no anaesthetic, and other vital equipment required for the type of surgery the horrific wounds demanded. And as a form of collective punishment all electricity to Falluja had been cut for days. The clinic had a generator, but when the petrol ran out the Doctors had to continue surgery using the glow from cigarette lighters, candles and torches.

We spoke to the Doctors - they were exhausted, and looked defeated as they told us the stories of their recent cases - a ten-year-old boy with a bullet wound to the head, a grandmother with an abdominal bullet wound - both the victims of U.S snipers, young men with severe burns, limbs blown off and so on. But each time a new patient arrived the Doctors quickly got up, put on a new set of surgical gloves and got to work.

Many had worked for 24 hours straight, others surviving on only a few hours sleep for days at a time. They didn't complain. They are the heroes of Fallujah.

...

The Doctors asked if we could accompany an ambulance packed with food and medical supplies across town to a hospital that had been cut off. It was in the US controlled section of the town so it was not able to receive aid because of constant sniper fire.

The Doctors figured our foreign nationality could make a difference in negotiating the safe passage of the ambulance with the soldiers.

It might seem a strange and unnecessary mission to help an ambulance drive from one place to another - anywhere else in the world it's a basic thing, but this is Fallujah and this is war and nothing is as it should be, despite guarantees laid out in the Geneva Convention.

The last time an ambulance went to this part of town it was shot at by US troops. I know this because two of my friends were in the ambulance at the time, trying to reach a pregnant woman who had gone into pre-mature labor. They didn't reach her, but the bullet holes in the ambulance are a testament to the fact they tried.

So we packed the ambulance with supplies and got in the back

...

We drove slowly through the parts of Fallujah controlled by Iraqi fighters then stopped in a side-street that faced a main road. We could not go any further because the main road was under watch and control of US snipers. They had developed a habit of shooting at anything that moved.

...

"Hello! American soldiers. We are foreign aid workers- British, Australian, American. We are not armed. We are asking permission to transport an ambulance on this road."

My injured hand was shaking as I held my passport now damp with my blood. I tried to work out what I was feeling: fear, anger, determination. I still don't know.

We had only repeated the message twice and walked a few metres when our answer came.

Two more bullets. By this stage I think I entered a state of shock. I had been shot at, not once, but twice by American soldiers after politely asking permission to transport aid to a hospital.

I guess the answer was 'No'.

Jo got angry. We all did. We stepped back to the corner but Jo continued on the loud speaker.

'Do you know it is against the Geneva Convention to fire at unarmed civilians and at ambulances?" she cried.

...

PPS: Some people have asked: "how can you be sure it was American soldiers who shot at you?". The answer is that the area we were in was under the control of US soldiers for at least five days. Iraqi fighters did not have had access to the area the shots came from.

US/military viewpoint  

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