Doug Lorimer
A week after US Marine General John Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, claimed on November 18 that the battle for Fallujah was over, US troops were still engaged in intense battles with Iraqi resistance fighters in the bombed-out city.
The November 26 Boston-based Christian Science Monitor reported that on November 22, four Iraqi fighters, armed only with grenades and AK-47 assault rifles, "locked an entire [US marine] company in intense battle for hours", resulting in one dead marine and nine wounded. All four Iraqi fighters were killed, after the marine company called in an AC-130 gunship, "which destroyed four houses used by the insurgents with 40 Howitzer shells".
According to the Monitor, "US commanders say that such costly battles are taking place across Fallujah, where US Marine and Army units launched an assault more than two weeks ago in a bid to cut off the lethal insurgency that has spread across Iraq."
On November 21, China's Xinhua news agency's Baghdad bureau reported that residents coming out of Fallujah said the city's defenders still controlled 60% of the city. They said the invaders only controlled the north-eastern third of the city.
In February, 900 US Army troops were driven out of Fallujah by its armed residents. In April, 4500 US marines killed at least 700 Fallujah residents in a failed three-week attempt to recapture the city. After weeks of nightly air strikes, about 10,000 US marines and army troops, using massive firepower from warplanes, attack helicopters, tanks and artillery, invaded Fallujah on November 8.
The few Iraqi journalists who remained in the city after the US invasion began have given harrowing accounts of the brutality of the US military.
Bilal Hussein, a resident of Fallujah who works as a photographer for Associated Press, told AP on November 17 how he had escaped from the fighting: "I decided to swim the [Euphrates] river. But I changed my mind after seeing US helicopters firing and killing people who tried to cross. I saw a family of five shot dead. I helped bury a man by the river bank with my own hands."
Hussein had planned to stay in Fallujah to cover the fighting. But he said he fled after feeling he was in grave danger. "US soldiers began to open fire on the houses, so I decided it was very dangerous to stay. Destruction was everywhere. I saw people dead in the streets, the wounded were bleeding and there was no one to help them."
Abdul Rahman, a Fallujah resident working for Xinhua, arrived at the agency's Baghdad office on November 21, after having spent 12 days in Fallujah. Rahman said he had witnessed six injured Iraqis being dragged by several US soldiers to a street and then rolled over by a tank. He had also met a woman whose husband and two sons were shot dead in front of her when the family attempted to surrender to US soldiers.
"We had to crawl with bare hands in darkness and hide in houses in daytime for fear of being shot by American snipers", Rahman told his Xinhua colleagues. "We had only one bottle of water and drank little each time. As for food, we only had dates."
In the days before the US invasion of Fallujah began, up to 300,000 residents fled to nearby towns or to makeshift refugee camps several kilometres outside the city. The Iraqi Red Crescent estimated that about 50,000 residents remained in the city at the start of the US invasion.
According to the November 18 British Independent: "Aid organisations say 102,000 Fallujah refugees are in Amiriyah, 50,000 are in Baghdad; about 21,600 are in Karma, 18,000 are in Nieamiyah and 12,000 are in Habbaniyah. UNICEF and the aid groups say Amiriyah, an industrial centre, suffers from a serious lack of shelter, and Habbaniyah, formerly a tourist resort, has a severe shortage of clean water."
General Abdul Qadir Mohan, the commander of the puppet Iraqi troops supporting the US invasion of Fallujah, admitted to the Independent that the refugees were living in deplorable conditions. "In some cases", Mohan said, "there are seven families living in one room and sometimes 300 people have to wait in line to use the toilet. Many are already suffering from diseases."
From Green Left Weekly, December 1, 2004.
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