Journalists
Tell Of US Falluja Killings
By Aljazeera
23 March, 2005
Aljazeera
All
is quiet in Falluja, or at least that is how it seems, given that the
mainstream media has largely forgotten about the Iraqi city. But independent
journalists are risking life and limb to bring out a very different
story.The picture they are painting is of US soldiers killing whole
families, including children, attacks on hospitals and doctors, the
use of napalm-like weapons and sections of the city destroyed.
One of the few reporters
who has reached Falluja is American Dahr Jamail of the Inter Press Service.
He interviewed a doctor who had filmed the testimony of a 16-year-old
girl.
"She stayed
for three days with the bodies of her family who were killed in their
home. When the soldiers entered she was in her home with her father,
mother, 12 year-old brother and two sisters.
She watched the
soldiers enter and shoot her mother and father directly, without saying
anything. They beat her two sisters, then shot them in the head. After
this her brother was enraged and ran at the soldiers while shouting
at them, so they shot him dead," Jamail relates.
Another report comes
from an aid convoy headed up by Dr Salem Ismael. He was in Falluja last
month. As well as delivering aid he photographed the dead, including
children, and interviewed remaining residents.
Again his story
does not tally with the indifference shown by the main media networks.
"The accounts
I heard ... will live with me forever. You may think you know what happened
in Falluja, but the truth is worse than you could possibly have imagined,"
he says.
He relates the story
of Hudda Fawzi Salam Issawi from the Julan district of Falluja: "Five
of us, including a 55-year-old neighbour, were trapped together in our
house in Falluja when the siege began. On 9 November American marines
came to our house.
'My father and the
neighbour went to the door to meet them. We were not fighters. We thought
we had nothing to fear. I ran into the kitchen to put on my veil, since
men were going to enter our house and it would be wrong for them to
see me with my hair uncovered.
"This saved
my life. As my father and neighbour approached the door, the Americans
opened fire on them. They died instantly.
"Me and my
13-year-old brother hid in the kitchen behind the fridge. The soldiers
came into the house and caught my older sister. They beat her. Then
they shot her. But they did not see me. Soon they left, but not before
they had destroyed our furniture and stolen the money from my father's
pocket."
Journalist and writer
Naomi Klein has also come under attack for insisting that US forces
are eliminating those who dare to count casualties.
No less than the
US ambassador to the UK David Johnson wrote a letter to British newspaper
The Guardian that published Klein's work, demanding evidence, which
she then provided.
The first piece
of evidence Klein sent to Johnson was that the hospital in Falluja was
raided to stop any reporting of casualties, a tactic that was later
repeated in Mosul.
"The first
major operation by US marines and Iraqi soldiers was to storm Falluja
general hospital, arresting doctors and placing the facility under military
control.
"The New York
Times reported that 'the hospital was selected as an early target because
the American military believed that it was the source of rumours about
heavy casualties', noting that 'this time around, the American military
intends to fight its own information war, countering or squelching what
has been one of the insurgents' most potent weapons'.
The Los Angeles
Times quoted a doctor as saying that the soldiers 'stole the mobile
phones' at the hospital - preventing doctors from communicating with
the outside world."
As Dahr Jamail reports
from his online diary "doctors are now technically forbidden to
talk to the media or allow them to take photos in Iraqi hospitals unless
granted permission from the Ministry of Health and its US-adviser".
Allied to this are various reports of the US using napalm and napalm-like
weaponry in Falluja.
Jamail recounts:
"Last November, another Falluja refugee from the Julan area, Abu
Sabah, told me: 'They (US military) used these weird bombs that put
up smoke like a mushroom cloud. Then small pieces fall from the air
with long tails of smoke behind them.'
"He explained
that pieces of these bombs exploded into large fires that burned peoples'
skin even when water was dumped on their bodies, which is the effect
of phosphorous weapons, as well as napalm."
The reports of the
use of napalm in civilian areas are widespread, as are many other frightening
allegations.
The attacks on the
hospitals and medical facilities in Falluja are also in direct contravention
of the Geneva Conventions.
But as Richard Perle,
a senior adviser to US President George Bush said at the start of the
Iraq war: "The greatest triumph of the Iraq war is the destruction
of the evil of international law."