www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1206705,00.html
At 7am on Wednesday Fadhil Ahmed ate his last piece of flat bread before bundling his wife and children into their Chevrolet. They set off out of Falluja and down a dusty unpaved track. After avoiding the Americans the Ahmeds got stuck at a US roadblock, and had to sleep in a neighbouring village. They are attacking us with jet fighters, tanks and artillery. In the meantime conditions for the civilian population still stuck in Falluja were hellish. Abu Mohammad, 30, who left the town yesterday morning, said: "There is no electricity. When I was about to leave there were two ladies trying to get out. The Bush administration has tried to portray the insurgents inside the city as either foreign fighters or diehard supporters of Saddam Hussein. On Wednesday, Tony Blair described them as "former regime elements" and "outside terrorists". Yesterday, however, those from Falluja could not understand Mr Blair's claim. The insurgents were not terrorists but Iraqis, they did not support the old regime and were merely fighting a patriotic war against American occupation. Two of his cousins, Kalif Ali, 22, and Issam Shaker, 19, had been shot dead by US snipers. We picked up Kalif's body and buried him in the football stadium. Muthana Harith al-Dhari, spokesman for the Muslim clerics' association which has been attempting to mediate in the Falluja standoff, said the coalition's analysis of the situation in the town was fundamentally wrong. Dr al-Dhari admitted some Saddam supporters could be inside the town but put their numbers at "no more than 100". Alone, they would not be able to defy the US military, he pointed out. Yesterday volunteers from the Iraqi Red Crescent erected 25 more tents in the al-Khadra camp, which are now home to 100 Falluja families. The refugees got three meals a day and their children were being educated in local schools, spokesman Abdul Karim said. Yesterday Mr Ahmed, who left Falluja with 13 members of his family, some of them sitting in the boot of his car, admitted that he held a long-time grudge against the British. The British had killed his brother in 1941, he said, during the second world war. British troops had just invaded the country for the second time to get rid of its pro-German government.
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