- The missiles struck at just after 3am with devastating
effect. Eight members of the al-Jabouri family were killed as they slept,
their home destroyed. The following morning the US military issued a
statement
saying that fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, America's number one
enemy in Iraq, had been taken out in a precision strike in Fallujah.
-
- The town had been pounded nightly for three weeks, with
the Americans insisting that those killed and maimed were insurgents mainly
from Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group, which kidnapped and murdered the
British hostage Ken Bigley and his two American colleagues. Repeated
protests
by doctors in local hospitals that the vast majority of the casualties
are civilians have been dismissed as rebel propaganda. Now the town is
waiting for an imminent ground and air assault, amid fears of a
bloodbath.
-
- Among the dead in the al-Jabouri family were 26-year-old
Atika, who was six months pregnant, her three-year-old son Omar, her
husband
Thamir, 28, her sister Athra and her mother. Atika's prematurely born baby
lived for a few hours after her, but they were buried in the same
grave.
-
- The only member of the family to come out alive was
Atika's
five-year-old daughter, Ayisha. She was asleep, hugging her grandmother,
who was killed instantly. Miraculously the little girl survived, but she
was badly injured, burnt and lacerated by shrapnel and flying glass. Ahmed
Fawzi, Ayisha's uncle, recalled: "I live nearby and ran over after
hearing the explosions. There was nothing left. We had to bring out the
bodies one by one." Ayisha, with injuries to her shoulder, arms, back
and legs, was taken to a hospital in nearby Ramadi for treatment. She is
now being looked after by the family of her mother's uncle, Khalil Hammadi,
in a village outside Fallujah. Lying on a mattress on the floor, she does
not betray the considerable pain she must be under. But the normally bright
and inquisitive girl is very quiet.
-
- Mr Fawzi said: "When in hospital in Ramadi, she
overheard some discussion about an operation on a boy called Omar. She
said to us afterwards 'I hear them talking about Omar'. She did not know
at the time he was dead. That is the only time she had talked about her
brother. She has not once asked anything about her mother or father. It
is very sad, but what can we do?"
-
- Mazin Younis, an Iraqi-born human rights activist from
Manchester who visited Fallujah to investigate the damage, found that the
overwhelming number of attacks have been on civilian targets. Mr Younis,
who as a legal case worker helped gather evidence of alleged abuse by
British
troops in southern Iraq, is attempting to raise funds so that Ayisha can
get medical treatment abroad, and hopes that the same help can be extended
to other injured children in Fallujah.
-
- "People in Fallujah say they are being
punished,"
said Mr Younis. "Ordinary people are being killed. I had a meal in
a kebab restaurant called Hajji Hussain. It was full of families. Two days
later it was bombed by the Americans." The US military maintained
the kebab house was in fact a front for a command and control centre for
Tawhid and Jihad.
-
- There are already 1,000 US troops, backed up by
artillery,
tanks and Iraqi government troops, surrounding Fallujah. The Americans
and Iraq's interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, have demanded that the
town hand over Zarqawi, supposedly based there, or face retribution. Civic
leaders have protested that this is an impossible demand. They point out
that the Americans, for all their military might and a reward of $25m,
have not managed to capture or kill the Jordanian-born militant. Rahim
Haidar Mohammed, a resident of Fallujah, said: "The Americans have
created a bogeyman in Zarqawi. We haven't seen him. They can't kill him,
so they kill us. We are just waiting for the big attack."
-
- Many see the Fallujah deployment as retaliation for last
week's bombings in the Green Zone in Baghdad, in which four Americans were
killed. The bitter Fallujah clashes of last April were also regarded as
retribution, following the lynching of four US contractors. After a bloody
siege for weeks, and 600 Iraqi dead, US-led forces withdrew, leaving the
town to the insurgents.
-
- At the time President George Bush said: "Our
military
commanders will do all that is necessary to secure Fallujah." The
commander of the Marines who carried out the assault later disagreed with
that policy of aggression, saying it destroyed the trust being built with
local people through reconstruction projects.
-
- "We felt we had a method that we wanted to apply
to Fallujah, that we ought to let the situation settle before we appeared
to be attacking out of revenge," said Lt Gen James Conway. But he
added: "We follow orders. We had our say ... We saluted smartly and
went about our attack."
-
- ©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. All rights
reserved
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/
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