- 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.
-
- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=582915
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