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Reference

Falluja Archive Oct 2004

Falluja Table - May 03

Tables with IBC-extracted news, by date:

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IBC Extracted Falluja News - May 03

News Source
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Author
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Title
Associated Press
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Jim Krane
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MOST FALLUJAH COMBATANTS WERE IRAQI NATIONALS, COMMANDERS SAY
Specific incidents / deaths

 

Date killed?  
Total

 

Civilian / Fighter

 

Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

 

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

U.S. officials have for months publicly promoted the notion that foreign fighters and terrorists are playing a major role in the anti-American insurgency in Fallujah and the rest of Iraq.

By blaming foreigners, U.S. authorities hope to quash the idea that Iraqis are rising up against military occupation and frame the conflict as part of the wider war on terror. However, foreigners play a tiny role in Iraq's insurgency, many military experts say.

In Fallujah, U.S. military leaders say around 90 percent of the 1,000 or more fighters battling the Marines are Iraqis. To date, there have been no confirmed U.S. captures of foreign fighters in Fallujah - although a handful of suspects have been arrested.

Those who have spent time inside Fallujah have described a city consumed with the fight - fathers and sons fighting for the local mujahedeen and wives and daughters cooking and caring for the wounded.

"The whole city supports this jihad," said Houssam Ali Ahmed, 53, a Fallujah resident who fled to Baghdad when his neighborhood was caught in the fighting. "The people of Fallujah are fighting to defend their homes. We are Muslim mujahedeen fighting a holy war."

Elsewhere in Iraq, U.S. military commanders say foreigners have an even smaller role in the insurgency.

In Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey has said foreigners account for just 1 percent or so of guerrillas. Dempsey said his 1st Armored Division detained just 50 to 75 foreign fighter suspects in Baghdad over the past year, among a population of captured guerrillas that reached 2,000.

...

Marines have captured at least one foreigner in Fallujah, a Sudanese man, said Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, a Marine battalion commander. Five foreign passport holders have been detained in the city, a top military official said. Byrne said he was unsure whether any had fought in the uprising.

But foreign participation appears far lower than U.S. occupation officials like chief spokesman Dan Senor have suggested. Senor has portrayed the battle of Fallujah as one in which foreign fighters and terrorists were holding the city's "silent majority" hostage.

...

One top U.S. military official - who had publicly blamed foreign fighters for a large measure of the revolt - conceded privately that the U.S. military may never find out whether many foreigners had fought in Fallujah. Many may have escaped, he said.

Previous U.S. claims that foreigners were behind attacks in Iraq have turned out to be shaky.

In March, after suicide bombers killed up to 271 people during the Shiite holiday of Ashoura, U.S. and Iraqi leaders quickly blamed foreign terrorists - fingering al-Zarqawi as the chief suspect. Officials said 10 foreigners had been arrested, five of whom were released, and five of whom later turned out to be Iraqis.

Other suicide bombings, including two in February that killed almost 100 police and army recruits, were initially blamed on foreign groups. Subsequent evidence suggested Iraqis were behind the attacks.

US/military viewpoint

"I would also say that there is a sense of frustration we are hearing among the silent majority of Fallujans about the foreign fighters and international terrorists that are hanging their hats in Fallujah right now," Senor said in a news conference last month. "That is not something the majority of Fallujans support."

Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the command's chief spokesman, suggested this week that foreign fighters and terrorists were "driving a wedge" between Fallujah's residents and the Americans.

News Source
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Author
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Title
Reuters
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Joseph Logan
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FALLUJA TURNS OUT TO BURY DEAD AFTER U.S. PULLBACK
Specific incidents / deaths

"I thank God for letting us stand up to the Americans, but it is also bitter," said Hamid Eisawy, whose daughter was among those buried as residents of the Golan neighbourhood -- pounded from the air by U.S. bombers last week -- brought out bodies they had been unable to retrieve until now.

...

By afternoon, about 20 bodies, including the unidentified, whose graves were simply marked "Martyr", had been buried.

"These are all from today, and more are coming," he said.

...

Gravediggers at the soccer stadium showed visitors a trench at the fringe of the field marked by a heap of newly turned, rancid-smelling earth and a stone block reading "Spies".

"These were seven who we caught spotting for the Americans and killed," said one youth who identified himself as Jassem.

Others trooped past the grave and spat on it.

Date killed? pre-30th?
Total 1 (daughter of Hamid Eisawy) +20 (bodies recovered on 2nd?) + 7 ('spies')
=28
Civilian / Fighter  
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

As plumes of dust and a fetid odour rose from the field, workers planted gravestones -- two and three to a grave, in the case of families -- that mark the cost of a month of siege.

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

"Before the massacre, I told people in the mosque that the Americans were passing through and that we were staying, and that they should not attack their vehicles," said Sheikh Jamal Shakir Nazzal, a local religious leader freed last week after a year in U.S. detention for suspected ties to insurgents.

He said his release came as U.S. envoys outlined their plan for backing away from confrontation with the city.

But he was sceptical of the U.S. policy in Falluja: "I told them that they are using people who are agents, traitors, prostitutes bought with dollars," he said.

Others echoed that view, suggesting that if U.S. forces expect local proxies to put an end to the insurgency, they are badly mistaken.

US/military viewpoint  
News Source
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Author
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Title
Inter-Press Service
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Aaron Glantz
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VICTORY RISES ABOVE A MASS GRAVE
Specific incidents / deaths

A team of local volunteers wearing surgical masks lifts the rotting body of a middle-aged woman from a shallow grave in the front yard of a house. The house owner says the body lay there three weeks.

A U.S. aircraft bombed her car as she fled the city with her husband. The husband was buried in the garden of the house next door. The destroyed remains of the car are scattered a few metres away.

...

The head of the medical says his clinic's ambulance was fired upon by U.S. Marine snipers twice during the siege. One of the clinic's volunteers was killed.

...

With the bombing over, residents have begun to file through the graveyard looking for their loves ones. Among them is 50-year-old Ahmed Saud Muhasin al-Isawi, who returned to Fallujah after living in a camp three weeks as a refugee. He says his two cousins, aged 18 and 13, were found buried in the stadium.

"They stayed in their houses and didn't go outside," he says, "but they're still dead." The rest of his family tried to leave but were prevented by persistent U.S. sniper fire.

Ahmed Saud says a niece also died in the U.S. military assault, but he has not found her body. Nor has he been able to locate any of her eight children.

Date killed? early to mid-April?
Total 2 (middle-aged woman and husband) +1 (clinicl volunteer) +3 (18 and 13-yr-old cousins of Ahmed Saud Muhasin al-Isawi, and a niece)=6 (niece's 8 children also missing)
Civilian / Fighter 6/0
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

The volunteers wheel the woman's body on a gurney towards a small pick-up truck. In half an hour, she is buried in the municipal football stadium alongside 300 others killed this month by the U.S. military.

At the football stadium a new trench has just been dug by locals working with volunteers from mosques. When new bodies come in they are placed in the trench and covered with dirt. Then a slab of concrete is placed above.

"There was not enough space in the city's graveyards," says 30-year-old Fadel Abbas Khlaff who worked five days to bury the dead before picking up a gun to fight the U.S. military. "Sometimes we would bury two people in the same grave to save space."

Date range? 5th-30th?
Total 300 (one football field)
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis

"We couldn't give her a proper burial," the house owner told IPS, "because every time we would go outside, American snipers would shoot at us. They even shot at us when we retrieved her body from the car after the Americans bombed it."

...

"The Americans are dogs," he says. "They try to kill anybody who works in humanitarian aid. They attack any humanitarian aid worker, doctor, or ambulance to kill him." Many more bodies continue to rot under buildings that collapsed under U.S. bombing, he says.

US/military viewpoint

"We are certainly not withdrawing from Fallujah," U.S. spokesman Brigadier- General Mark Kimmitt told reporters in Baghdad. "Nothing could be further from the truth."

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