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| 5/24 |
| 2004/11/15-16 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:34892 Activity:moderate |
11/14 Mass civilian death in Fallujah? Sadly, there is not a single US
media outlet that I can find covering this story.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4004873.stm
http://csua.org/u/9z2 (reuters.co.uk)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1350926,00.html
\_ If we fought WWI or WWII like this we might as well let
the enemy win.
\_ What are you blathering about? WWI and WWII weren't entered
on false pretenses and without a plan to win.
\_ Not to be unsympathetic, but what the heck are they still doing
there? We warned them for months ahead of time.
\_ Fallujah is a city of 200 to 300,000 people. Apparently most
of them got out, but there were about 30,000 that were still
there when the attack began. The biggest problem seems to be
that these people have no food or clean water, and the army
is still not allowing the red cross to go in and supply
food and water.
\_ I can see the reality of the situation, but that doesn't
answer my question.
\_ It's tough to say. Human beings are funny creatures. If
a big army invaded your country and then told you to leave
the home you grew up in because they were going to blow it
up, would you leave? I don't think it's such an easy
question to answer. Humans are very good at denial.
\_ Then they will die. Psychological illness is very bad
in a warzone. -- darwinist
\_ No need to use an alternate sig, ilya.
\_ Many Floridians stayed at home because they could no
longer afford to stay in a motel. What if the people
can't afford to leave, are too frail to leave, have
no where they can stay, etc.?
\_ Are you familiar with the concept of a refugee?
If folks with big ass guns tell you to leave for
a couple of weeks, you should probably leave.
If you honestly have no better choice than to stay
at a place that's about to get bombed into
the stoneage, you are in deep trouble. I am not
sure what you expected from a military
operation. Would you rather the torture/kidnapping
rigs operating in Fallujah kept going?
\_ Imagine a city the size of Oakland, with higher crime. Now some
foreigners are telling you to leave. If you do leave, anything
you don't bring will get looted, and violent gangs will use your
house to take pot-shots at men with 155mm cannons.
\_ Put like this, I have a hard time believing the US is going
to get out of this without a bloody nose.
\_ BUD DAY doesn't like your tone, son.
\_ Heh, it's always Bud Day in East Oaktown. |
| 5/24 |
|
| news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4004873.stm Printable version Eyewitness: Smoke and corpses US troops, backed by Iraqi forces, are locked in a fierce fight to wrest the city of Falluja from rebel control. The BBC News website spoke by ph one to Fadhil Badrani, an Iraqi journalist and resident of Falluja who r eports regularly for Reuters and the BBC World Service in Arabic. We are publishing his and other eyewitness accounts from the city in orde r to provide the fullest possible range of perspectives from those who a re there: Bombing Falluja US bomber aircraft have been supporting ground forces in Falluja A row of palm trees used to run along the street outside my house - now o nly the trunks are left. The upper half of each tree has vanished, blown away by mortar fire. From my window, I can also make out that the minarets of several mosques have been toppled. There are more and more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbe arable. Sleeping through bombardment A house some doors from mine was hit during the bombardment on Wednesday night. I tried to flee the city last night but I could not get very far. I have learnt to sleep through the noise - the smaller bombs no longer bother me. Rubble-strewn street US marines have been fighting Falluja rebels at close quarters Without water and electricity, we feel completely cut off from everyone e lse. I only found out Yasser Arafat had died because the BBC rang me. It is hard to know how much people outside Falluja are aware of what is g oing on here. I want them to know about conditions inside this city - there are dead wo men and children lying on the streets. Many are dying from their injuries because there is no medical help left in the city whatsoever. Some families have started burying their dead in their gardens. Iraqi soldiers There has been a lot of resistance in Jolan. The Americans have taken over several high-rise buildings overlooking the district. But the height has not helped them control the area because the streets o f Jolan are very narrow and you cannot fire into them directly. Enlarge Image The US military moves along the main roads and avoids the side-streets. T he soldiers do not leave their armoured vehicles and tanks. If they get fired on, they fire back from their tanks or call in air-stri kes. I saw some Iraqi government soldiers on the ground earlier. I don't know which part of the country these soldiers are from. They are definitely not from any of the western provinces such as al-Anbar. When the US forces pull back from an area, th e Iraqi soldiers will take over there. |
| csua.org/u/9z2 -> www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=620124§ion=news New Falluja battle erupts By Omar Anwar BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Aid agencies have called on US forces and the Iraqi government to allow them to deliver food, medicine and water to Falluja , and saying that four days of intense fighting have turned the city int o a "big disaster". The Iraqi Red Crescent Society, which receives support from foreign agenc ies including the Red Cross and UNICEF, said on Friday it had asked US forces and Iraq's interim government to let them deliver relief goods t o Falluja and establish a medical team in the city's main hospital, but had received no reply. "We call on the Iraqi government and US forces to allow us to do our hu manitarian duty to the innocent people," said Firdoos al-Ubadi, Red Cres cent spokeswoman. "This is their responsibility," she said, adding that judging by reports received from refugees and pictures broadcast on television, Falluja was a "big disaster". A US military spokesman said the Red Crescent had permission to help re fugees around Falluja, but could not say if it had been granted access t o the city itself. The Red Crescent has seven teams of doctors and relief workers, backed by trucks of food, medicine and water, ready to go into each of Falluja's districts when the word is given. About 10,000 US soldiers and Marines, backed by heavy artillery and war planes, surged into Falluja from several directions on Monday night, la unching an offensive on rebels. The US military estimates that 600 militants have been killed in four d ays of street fighting. It says 18 US troops and 34 Iraqi soldiers hav e also died and 178 Americans have been wounded. Scores of buildings in Falluja have been completely destroyed, with TV fo otage showing some districts all but levelled. There has been no water a nd electricity for days and food shops have been closed, residents say. HIT BY SHRAPNEL US commanders say civilian casualties have been low, but residents disp ute that, describing incidents in which non-combatants, including women and children, have been killed by shrapnel or hit by bombs. In one case earlier this week, a 9-year-old boy was hit in the stomach by a piece of shrapnel. His parents said they couldn't get him to hospital because of the fighting, so they wrapped sheets around his stomach to t ry to stem the bleeding. He died hours later of blood loss and was burie d in the garden. Rasoul Ibrahim, a father of three, fled Falluja on Thursday morning and a rrived with his wife and children in Habbaniya, about 12 miles to the we st, on Thursday night. He said families left in the city were in desperate need. P eople are eating flour because there's no proper food," he told aid work ers in Habbaniya, which has become a refugee camp, with around 2,000 fam ilies sheltering there. Ubadi from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society said many families taking refug e in Habbaniya and other villages nearby were suffering from diarrhoea a nd malnutrition and needed medicine as well as basic necessities such as lentils, sugar, bread, tea and candles. She said a convoy of aid, including drinking water, food and medicine, wa s ready to leave for Falluja from Amiriya, a town to the south, but need ed permission from US forces. She also called on international aid age ncies to send more supplies. |
| www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1350926,00.html The Observer The full cost of the battle of Falluja emerged last night as large number s of wounded civilians were evacuated to hospitals in Baghdad, as insurg ents stepped up retaliatory attacks in other cities. As the first Red Crescent aid convoy was allowed into Falluja, Iraq's Hea lth Minister, Alaa Alwan, said ambulances had begun transferring a 'sign ificant number' of injured civilians out of the battle zone, although he did not specify how many. The evacuation of the wounded from Falluja came as insurgents consolidate d their grip on large areas of Iraq's third largest city, Mosul, setting up checkpoints and conducting their own patrols, and as fresh Iraqi and US troops were rushed north to counter the new threat. The moves came amid renewed warnings from aid groups that Iraq's civilian population was facing a 'humanitarian catastrophe'. Although many of Falluja's 200,000 to 300,000 residents fled the city bef ore the assault, between 30,000 and 50,000 are believed to have remained during the fighting. The horrific conditions for those who remained in the city have begun to emerge in the last 24 hours as it became clear that US military claims o f 'precision' targeting of insurgent positions were false. According to one Iraqi journalist who left Falluja on Friday, some of the civilian injuries were caused by the massive firepower directed on to c ity neighbourhoods during the battle. Frozen food had spoile d and people could not charge their cellphones. At the main hospital, cut off from the rest of the city, doctors have rep ortedly been treating the injured with nothing but bandages, while the R ed Crescent says people have been bleeding to death for lack of medical attention. The claims came as an Iraqi Red Crescent convoy entered Falluja yesterday with the first aid supplies to reach the city since US-led forces began to blast their way in five days ago. Prior to that the city had been surrounded by a US military cordon and su bjected to heavy daily bombardment. Red Crescent spokeswoman Firdoos al-Abadi - who had described the situati on inside the city as 'catastrophic' - said 30 volunteers with five truc ks and three ambulances had driven into the city west of Baghdad. The aid convoy reached Falluja's main hospital, on the west bank of the E uphrates, but US forces stopped it crossing the river into the city cent re, saying bridges were insecure. The fears of large numbers of civilian injured have raised fresh warnings that the suffering in Falluja will be used to rally insurgents across n orthern Iraq. As new attacks took place in Baghdad and Samarra and President Bush used a radio address to warn of increasing violence in the run-up to election s in January, US Marine officers in Falluja itself said they hoped to ha ve the whole of the city under their control within 72 hours. The predictions came as US troops, tanks and artillery launched a major a ttack on what they said were the final positions of insurgents still hol ding outs, leaving a pall of black smoke covering much of the city. Iraq's national security adviser, Qassem Dawoud, said about 1,000 insurge nts had been killed and another 200 captured during the Fallujah operati on. Meanwhile, the US death toll rose to 24 after two marines were killed by a home-made bomb. |