[Mb-civic] Unembedded reports from Falluja

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit

The Guardian - Nov 15, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1351332,00.html

U.S. Denies Need for Falluja Aid Convoy

By Rory McCarthy

US military chiefs said yesterday that they saw no need for the
Iraqi Red Crescent to deliver aid inside Falluja because they did not
think any Iraqi civilians were trapped there.

"There is no need to bring [Red Crescent] supplies in because we
have supplies of our own for the people," said Colonel Mike Shupp of the
marines.

A convoy of food and medicine brought by the group on Saturday was
not allowed into the city.

Col Shupp said casualties could be brought out over the reopened
bridge and treated at Falluja's hospital, adding that he had not heard of
any civilians trapped inside the city.

The Red Crescent believes at least 150 families are trapped, with
many people in desperate need of food, blankets, water and medicine.

Some residents still inside the city, contacted by Reuters
yesterday, said their children were suffering from diarrhea and had not
eaten for days.

Asked what he would do about the families and other non-combatants
in the city, Col Shupp said: "I haven't heard that myself and the Iraqi
soldiers didn't tell me about that. We want to help them as much as we
can. We are on the radio telling them how to come out and how to come up
to coalition forces."

Red Crescent trucks and ambulances stopped at Falluja's main
hospital, outside the city.

There is almost no one at the hospital for doctors to treat because
most residents were too scared to leave their homes amid the fighting. The
Red Crescent has said the only way it can help is to go into the city.

As the military nears the end of its assault, some community
leaders have said resentment of the US presence will only grow more
violent.

Although US commanders believed the second attack on Falluja in
eight months would stamp out the insurgency centered in the city, many
residents believe the rebellion is spreading steadily nationwide.

Much of Falluja has been destroyed and hundreds of thousands of
residents are refugees but the attack seems only to have deepened the
city's anger and antagonized much of the Sunni minority.

One Sunni Muslim cleric, an aide to Abdullah Janabi, the wanted
head of the "mujahideen council" that ran Falluja until the US assault,
said the rebellion would intensify.

"Maybe the Americans will come into Falluja," said the cleric, who
asked not to be named. "Maybe they will take it. But it is not the end.
There are 18 provinces in Iraq and the resistance will continue to grow
tougher ... America has taken its last breath."

It is not an opinion the Iraqi government wants the world to hear.
Baghdad warned journalists last week to endorse the position that the
operation has been an overwhelming success or face legal action.

Reporters were "not to promote unrealistic positions or project
nationalist tags on terrorist gangs of criminals and killers", it said.

The cleric, aged in his 40s spoke to the Guardian for two hours in
a private house in Baghdad. He spent six years fighting in Saddam
Hussein's army in both the Iran-Iraq war and the first Gulf war and
largely supported the former dictator. In April last year he fought
alongside Iraqi troops at Baghdad airport and has helped run the
rebellion.

"I felt like every human being feels when someone comes into their
country: sad and terrified. Now we have to fight to change our sadness to
happiness," he said. He fled to Baghdad as the assault began last week.

"I didn't want negotiations. I knew they would come and bomb us,"
he said. "I saw fighting everywhere, destruction of the houses and a lot
of fighters, from Falluja, from Ramadi, Baghdad, Diyala, Mosul and
Samarra."

He said the insurgency and its guerrilla tactics were improving
daily. "For every weapon there is an opposing weapon," he said. "For a
Bradley or a tank, a mine blows it to pieces. For a Humvee, a BKC [a
Russian machine gun] can put holes in it. Our people are tough and have
only small weapons but they can defeat them with skill and pride and
dignity. You have to have belief and trust that if you die there is going
to be a victory."

Although the cleric represents the extreme, his views are broadly
shared by more secular and moderate figures.

In a separate interview at another Baghdad house, Mohammad Hassan
al-Balwa, a businessman, spoke of his frustration. He once ran Falluja's
council but resigned during the US assault in April.

"The Americans don't want this place to be quiet," he said. "From
the beginning they brought chaos and treated people badly. The pressure
the Americans put on the Fallujan people is what has made them so tough."

He said clerics should not take political positions, but defended
the role of the mujahideen council, much-criticised by the US military for
"terrorist" behavior.

Dr Balwa and the cleric said some groups were often too extreme,
particularly Tawhid and Jihad, which was behind the killing of Ken Bigley.

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***

A city lies in ruins, along with the lives of the
wretched survivors

By Michael Georgy in Fallujah and Kim Sengupta

15 November 2004

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=582915

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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Wounded U.S. Troops Describe Massive Insurgent Firepower in Fallujah    
.
The reports below, combined with official Department of Defense
statements, put U.S. military deaths in Iraq for the first 13 days of
November near or above 67. -- ma.
  Go to Original

  U.S. Death Toll Rises in Fallujah
  Reuters and Agence France-Presse

  Monday 15 November 2004

  The US military says 38 US soldiers have died in the week-long offensive
to recapture the Iraqi city of Fallujah from rebels and 275 had been
wounded.

  The toll includes three non-combat deaths.

  In a statement, the military said 60 of the wounded had already returned
to duty.

  More than 10,000 US and 2,000 Iraqi soldiers took part in the assault to
take the city ahead of elections due in January.

  The US military says about 1,000 insurgents have been killed and 450 to
550 captured.

  There is no word on civilian casualties, but residents say many people
have died.

  A hospital spokeswoman says 419 US soldiers wounded in Iraq have 
been
treated at a US military hospital in Germany.

  She says more than 220 of the soldiers were wounded in combat, either 
by
bullets or burns and most had been involved in the major assault on the
rebel city of Fallujah.

  Just under 200 of the wounded have already been sent on to the United
States for further treatment, she said.

  The Landstuhl Regional Medical Centre in south-west Germany is the
  largest
US military medical facility outside the United States.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- ----

  Wounded U.S. Troops Describe
  Massive Insurgent Firepower in Fallujah
  By Tony Czuczka
  The Associated Press

  Monday 15 November 2004

  Landstuhl, Germany - Fallujah's masked fighters have been fighting house
to house, firing from rooftops and mosques with a seemingly unending
supply of firepower, wounded U.S. servicemen said Monday, recounting 
tough
urban combat in the Iraqi insurgent stronghold.

  "They were ready to fight to the death," Lance Cpl. Travis Schafer, a
rifleman with a Marine battalion, told a news conference at Landstuhl
Regional Medical Center, where he was being treated for a shrapnel wound
in his right hand. A rocket-propelled grenade had exploded 15 yards to his
right in a deserted marketplace.

  "It's house-to-house fighting," he said. "Rooftop-to-rooftop."

  About 70 wounded soldiers have been arriving daily at the military
hospital in Germany since the week-old offensive in Fallujah began - about
twice the normal number of casualties from Iraq.

  The troops said the insurgents appeared well-organized and heavily
  armed.

  "They had their own little plan of what they were going to do, a pretty
set idea of where they were going to fight," said U.S. Army Spc. Kris
Clinkscales, 22, of San Antonio, Texas, his right arm in a sling with
shrapnel wounds.

  Schafer, of Puyallup, Wash., was surprised by the fighters' firepower.

  "It seemed like they have a pretty unlimited amount of RPGs and mortars.
They seemed to fling those about wildly," he said.

  Schafer, with the 1st Marine Regiment, said his unit had only pushed 400
yards into the city before it took heavy fire from small arms, mortars and
RPGs.

  "They were locking on us with RPGs and mortars from buildings all 
around
us," the 20-year-old said. "Even from mosques they were firing - from all
over the place."

  Lance Cpl. Ryan Chapman with the 1st Marine Regiment, had an ugly 
scar
over his left eye - a reminder of his encounter with a sniper.

  As his unit came under sustained fire, Chapman had been tracking a
  sniper
with the telescopic sight of his wire-guided missile launcher. But he was
hit first, with bullet striking his forehead just below the edge of his
helmet.

  Chapman, 22, of Lawrence, Kansas, acknowledged he had been lucky, 
but he
said he was eager to get back into action.

  "It's nothing too serious. It cracked my skull, but I think it looks
  worse
than it is," he said. "I want to go back - my buddies are out there."

  He was among 419 patients admitted to Landstuhl in the last week, 233 of
whom had combat-related injuries, according to doctors. The most 
common
wounds have been from bullets or blast injuries from rocket-propelled
grenades.

  While most the recent casualties in Landstuhl are from Fallujah,
  officials
do not have a precise breakdown.

  Another 46 wounded troops from Iraq were en route to the hospital
  Monday,
Landstuhl spokeswoman Marie Shaw said.

  The offensive in Fallujah has killed at least 38 American troops and six
Iraqi soldiers. The number of U.S. troops wounded is now 275, although
more than 60 have returned to duty. U.S. officials estimated more than
1,200 insurgents have been killed.

  No estimate of civilian casualties has been given.


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