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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Iraq aflame over mass killings in Fallujah
(James Cogan, wsws.org, 13 November 2004)
What is taking place is not so much a battle as a homicidal rampage by the US military against every Iraqi male trapped inside the city. Since the assault began on Sunday, Fallujah men aged between 15 and 55 have been prevented from leaving. As American bombs and shells rained down, they were left little choice but to fight for their lives against the advancing US troops. . . . An Iraqi journalist in Fallujah told Associated Press: "The Americans are shooting anything that moves." . . . The US forces have carried out a massive and indiscriminate bombardment from the air, making no attempt to avoid casualties among the estimated 100,000 civilians still in Fallujah. The city, a Los Angeles Times reporter wrote, is "a tableau of destroyed buildings, burned-out cars, battered mosques and piles of rubble". . . . Iraqi fighters, armed with little more than AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers, have fought a heroic defence against the overwhelming American firepower. To dislodge just one Iraqi sniper holding up US marines on Wednesday, an embedded New York Times journalist reported that a three-storey complex was hit with two 500-pound bombs, 35 155mm artillery shells, 10 120mm shells from Abram tanks and some 30,000 rounds from machine guns and small arms. The building, the journalist noted, was left a "smoking ruin". . . . Every building in the captured areas of the city is being searched by US or interim government Iraqi troops. From the footage coming out of Fallujah, the method of 'searching" by the American troops is to hurl grenades and pour machine gun fire into houses before entering. Every male found alive is being dragged away, bound and hooded, to detention centres. . . . There is every reason to believe that the number of Iraqi dead in Fallujah -- when the toll is finally able to be counted -- will be in the thousands. Hundreds of fighters and civilians are likely buried beneath collapsed buildings. Embedded journalists have noted the stench of decomposing bodies that hangs over the city. A crime of immense proportions has been perpetrated and it will be neither forgotten nor forgiven. . . . There have been virtually no medical personnel to treat Iraqis injured by the relentless American onslaught. A number of Iraqi doctors and nurses were killed on Monday in a US airstrike on one of the few functioning clinics in the city. A second clinic was destroyed later in the week. . . . Abbas Ali, a doctor in the city, told Al Jazeerah on Friday: "I'm one of the few medical cadres that survived last Monday from the massacre. We are in a very tragic situation. Hundreds of dead bodies are spread in the streets. Even the injured are still there. We cannot transfer them. We cannot do anything to save them. . . . "We call on all organisations and the whole world to help us. The US forces have told us through loudspeakers to get out and raise white flags. But all the city’s areas are under fierce bombing. We don’t know what to do. Stay in our place, which is under bombardment, or get out and get shot?" . . . The Iraqi Red Crescent Society has been denied entry into the city. Fardous al-Ubaidi, a spokeswoman for the organisation, told Associated Press: "There is no water, no food, no medicine, no electricity and no fuel and when we asked for permission, we were only allowed to approach the Fallujah outskirts but had no access to Fallujah itself." Thousands of elderly, women and children who have escaped since the assault began remain in refugee camps on the city’s fringes, without access to clean water or sanitation. . . . The reality is that Fallujah is being destroyed precisely because the resistance fighters in the city had demanded liberty -- from the US occupation of Iraq. The city’s council refused to recognise the legitimacy of the US-installed puppet interim government headed by CIA asset Iyad Allawi, and had upheld the moral and political right of Iraqis to conduct an armed struggle against the American invasion. . . . The US military has not been able to produce any credible evidence supporting the months of propaganda -- which was consistently denied by Fallujah’s leaders -- that hundreds of foreign terrorists, led by Jordanian extremist Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, were holding the city "hostage". The people who have fought and died in Fallujah have been overwhelmingly Iraqis defending their homes. . . . Over the next two months, the US military has been ordered to slaughter or drive underground all opposition to the occupation and to Allawi's regime, and to ensure that the only participants in sham elections planned for late January are pro-US parties and groups. Attacks are being prepared against 21 cities and towns where resistance is widespread. . . . The assault on Fallujah, however, has inflamed the Sunni regions of central and northern Iraq and is presenting the US occupation with the most serious military challenge since it began. Fighting or increased attacks on occupation troops are being reported in Ramadi, Samarra, Tikrit, Kirkuk, Baquaba and Baghdad, where a US helicopter was shot down overnight. . . . In the biggest blow to the occupation, the centre of Mosul, with a population approaching three million, has been taken over in the last several days by hundreds of Iraqi resistance fighters. US air strikes are now being carried out against the city, and hundreds of extra troops rushed to the area. . . . American troops arrested leading Sunni cleric Mahdi al-Sumaydai in Baghdad yesterday after he made a call for Iraqis to rise up against the occupation. US forces also raided the home of Harith al-Dhari, the head of the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, which is calling for a boycott of the elections over the atrocities being committed in Fallujah. . . . The main Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has remained silent throughout the bloodbath in Fallujah, is coming under pressure to condemn it. Before his arrest, al-Sumaydai stated: "We reproach Sistani for not officially taking a position on the offensive and we call on him to do so." . . . Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is also under pressure to issue a call for his supporters to resume fighting against the occupation. Sumaydai's statement reminded Shiites that the Sunni groups had spoken out in solidarity with Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters during the US assaults on the cities of Karbala and Najaf. . . . The US mass killings in Fallujah will prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. They have served only to broaden the resistance of the Iraqi people and deepen the revulsion and opposition internationally to the criminal war on Iraq.

posted by LoZo 12:22 PM