Joanna
Doug Henwood wrote:
> Independent (London) - November 15, 2004
>
> A city lies in ruins, along with the lives of the wretched survivors
>
> By Michael Georgy in Fallujah and Kim Sengupta
>
> After six days of intense combat against the Fallujah insurgents, US
> warplanes, tanks and mortars have left a shattered landscape of gutted
> buildings, crushed cars and charred bodies.
>
> A drive through the city revealed a picture of utter destruction, with
> concrete houses flattened, mosques in ruins, telegraph poles down,
> power and phone lines hanging slack and rubble and human remains
> littering the empty streets. The north-west Jolan district, once an
> insurgent stronghold, looked like a ghost town, the only sound the
> rumbling of tank tracks.
>
> US Marines pointed their assault rifles down abandoned streets, past
> Fallujah's simple amusement park, now deserted. Four bloated and burnt
> bodies lay on the main street, not far from US tanks and soldiers. The
> stench of the remains hung heavy in the air, mixing with the dust.
>
> Another body lay stretched out on the next block, its head blown off,
> perhaps in one of the countless explosions which rent the city day and
> night for nearly a week. Some bodies were so mutilated it was
> impossible to tell if they were civilians or militants, male or female.
>
> Fallujah, regarded as a place with an independent streak where
> citizens even defied the former leader Saddam Hussein at times, seemed
> lifeless. The minarets of the city's dozens of mosques stood silent,
> no longer broadcasting the call to holy war that so often echoed
> across the rooftops, inspiring fighters to join the insurgency.
>
> Restaurant signs were covered in soot. Pavements were crushed by
> 70-ton Abrams tanks, and rows of crumbling buildings stood on both
> sides of deserted streets. Upmarket homes with garages looked as if
> they had been abandoned for years. Cars lay crushed in the middle of
> streets. Two Iraqis in one street desperately trying to salvage some
> of their smashed belongings were the only signs of life.
>
> As US soldiers walked through neighbourhoods, their allies in the
> Iraqi forces casually moved along dusty streets past wires hanging
> down from gutted buildings. They carried boxes of bottled water to the
> rooftops of the upmarket villas they now occupy. The soldiers sat on
> the roofs staring at the ruins.
>
> As a small convoy of Humvees moved back to position on the edge of the
> Jolan district, a rocket landed in the sand about 100ft away, a
> reminder that militants were still out there somewhere, even if the
> city that harboured them has fallen. The few civilians left in
> Fallujah talked of a city left in ruins not just by the six days of
> the ground assault, but the weeks of bombing that preceded the attack.
>
> Residents have long been without electricity or water, abandoning
> their homes and congregating in the centre of the city as the US
> forces advanced from all sides. They had cowered in buildings as the
> battle unfolded past the windows.
>
> The reaction of US troops to attacks, say residents, have been out of
> all proportion; shots by snipers have been answered by rounds from
> Abrams tanks, devastating buildings and, it is claimed, injuring and
> killing civilians. This is firmly denied by the American military.
>
> About 200,000 refugees fled the fighting, and there have been
> outbreaks of typhoid and other diseases.
>
> People leaving the city described rotting corpses being piled up and
> thousands still trapped inside their homes, many of them wounded and
> without access to food, water or medical aid. US commanders insist
> civilian casualties in Fallujah have been low, but the Pentagon
> famously claims it does not keep figures.
>
> Escaping residents described incidents in which non-combatants,
> including women and children, were killed by shrapnel or hit by bombs.
> In one case last week, a nine-year-old boy was hit in the stomach by
> shrapnel. Unable to reach a hospital, he died hours later from blood
> loss. His father had to bury his body in their garden.
>
> Those trapped inside the city say they are reaching a point of
> desperation. "Our situation is very hard," said Abu Mustafa, contacted
> by telephone in the central Hay al-Dubat neighbourhood. "We don't have
> food or water," he told Reuters. "My seven children all have severe
> diarrhoea. One of my sons was wounded by shrapnel last night and he's
> bleeding, but I can't do anything to help him."
>
> Aamir Haidar Yusouf, a 39-year-old trader, sent his family out of
> Fallujah, but stayed behind to look after his home, not just during
> the fighting, but the looting which will follow. "The Americans have
> been firing at buildings if they see even small movements," he said.
>
> As the fighting died down yesterday he said: "They are also destroying
> cars, because they think every car has a bomb in it. People have moved
> from the edges of the city into the centre, and they are staying on
> the ground floors of buildings. There will be nothing left of Fallujah
> by the time they finish. They have already destroyed so many homes
> with their bombings from the air, and now we are having this from
> tanks and big guns."
>
> There was no sign of the guerrillas who scribbled graffiti along the
> walls of the park, encouraging Fallujah's 300,000 residents to join a
> holy war against US-led troops. "Long live the mujahedin," read the
> graffiti.
>
> Mohammed Younis, a former policeman, said: "The Americans and [Iyad]
> Allawi [Iraq's interim Prime Minister] have been saying that Fallujah
> is full of foreign fighters. That is not true; they left a long time
> ago. You will find them in other places, in Baghdad. We have been
> saying to Allawi and the Americans that they are not here, but they do
> not believe us."
>
> THE CIVILIAN DEATH TOLL
>
> By Harvey McGavin
>
> US military officials were last night counting the cost of their week
> long assault on Fallujah in which they claim to have killed some 1,200
> insurgents and some 44 servicemen lost their lives.
>
> But in the city which was once home to 300,000 people there were few
> reports of the number of civilians killed.
>
> Many are thought to have fled the fighting, but reports from the city
> say it is impossible to tell how many of the bodies that litter its
> rubble-strewn streets are those of ordinary citizens.
>
> Last week a report collated by the UN said 20 doctors had died during
> a US air strike on a clinic and there have been numerous reports of
> the US dropping huge bombs.
>
> The US Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed last week that Iraqi
> civilians had been warned how to avoid injury. "Innocent civilians in
> that city have all the guidance they need as to how they can avoid
> getting into trouble. There aren't going to be large numbers of
> civilians killed and certainly not by US forces," he said.
>
> In addition to the 38 Americans and six Iraqis killed in the assault,
> more than 200 US soldiers were injured. About 400 suspected insurgents
> have been arrested in Fallujah including "some" foreigners, interim
> Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said.
>
> The Iraq Coalition Casualties website reported that, as of Saturday,
> 1,181 US troops had been killed in Iraq. One Iraq-based report
> estimates civilian casualties to be 37,000. A report in the British
> medical journal The Lancet put the figure as high as 100,000.
>
> Prime minister Iyad Allawi said there had been no civilian casualties
> during the battle for Fallujah, contradicting accounts from residents
> inside the city.
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