Fallujah
Cannot Even Bury Its Dead
By Aaron Glantz
21 April, 2004
Inter Press Service
The
story of Yusuf Fakri Amash is the story of so much of Fallujah. The
11-year-old boy just managed to escape from the town with his family.
But not before the U.S. military killed his best friend.
"Ahmed was
in my class," he says. "He was younger than me. He was standing
next to the wall of the secondary school and was trying to cross the
street. He was hit by a bullet. The American troops fired the bullet."
So many Fallujahans
have been killed by the U.S. marines that residents have had to dig
mass graves. The city's football stadium now holds more than 200 bodies.
"When you see
a child five years old with no head, what can you say?" says a
doctor in Fallujah whose name is being withheld for his safety. "When
you see a child with no brain, just an open cavity, what can you say?"
Iraqi girls, from left to right, Gofran Mohammed, 9, and her sisters
Khitam, 5, Doha,10, and Wiam, 4, sit in a house they are sharing with
dozens of refugees from Fallujah in Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, April 17,
2004. The four girls lost their parents as well as two sisters and one
brother when U.S. troops opened fire on their car in Fallujah two weeks
ago. (AP Photo/Abdel Kader Saadi)
The doctor says many were buried in the football until it became full.
"When you are burying you cannot stay long because they (the U.S.
marines) will just shoot you," he says. "So we use the shovel.
Just dig a big hole and put a whole family in the hole and leave as
soon as possible so we are not shot."
Filmmaker Julia
Guest who traveled to Fallujah in a convoy delivering relief supplies
told IPS that the clinic's ambulance was fired upon twice by U.S. snipers
-- during the ceasefire. The second time it was fired on, it was carrying
U.S. and British citizens who had negotiated an agreement with the marines
to rescue the injured from an area under heavy U.S. sniper fire.
"It has blue
sirens," Guest recalls, describing the ambulance. "It's donated
by the Kingdom of Spain. It was carrying oxygen bottles, and the damage
to the ambulance was such that two of the wheels were blown off, so
they were left without an ambulance. And there are bullet holes all
over the sides and back from the second shooting."
The U.S. military
does not deny shooting at ambulances. But it blames the resistance fighters.
U.S. marines spokesperson Lt Eric Knapp says his forces have seen fighters
loading weapons into ambulances from mosques in the area.
"By using ambulances,
they are putting Iraqis in harm's way by denying them a critical component
of urgent medical care," he says. "Mosques, ambulances and
hospitals are protected under Geneva Convention agreements and are not
targeted by U.S. marines. However, once they are used for the purpose
of hostile intent toward coalition forces, they lose their protected
status and may be targeted."
Humanitarian aid
workers in Fallujah say the marines have been firing indiscriminately.
Australian aid volunteer Donna Malbun says U.S. forces fired warning
shots over her head Tuesday when she attempted to enter an ambulance
to deliver relief supplies.
"We were accompanying
an ambulance from one part of Fallujah to another area that was controlled
by the Americans," she says. "And we went along with the ambulance,
and at one stage got out to indicate to the Americans that we were coming
through with an ambulance with aid for a clinic that had been cut off."
They then used a
loudspeaker to identify themselves, she says. "We were dressed
in bright blue medical outfits, and we had our passports in our hands
with our hands in the air. Then we stepped forward into the street with
our hands in the air. We were walking down away from where the soldiers
were stationed. We didn't realize that. And they ended up shooting toward
our backs."
But it was not just
the U.S. Army that caused problems for Donna Malbun and her colleagues.
She says that on their way out of Fallujah her group was stopped by
Iraqi Mujahideen fighters who held them for 24 hours.
"They wanted
to know who we were at the beginning," Malbun says. "They
investigated and they asked questions and looked at our belongings,
and once they realized what we were doing, they treated us with great
respect."
Donna Malbun says
that the delegation was held in a large room and fed well during their
detention. British aid worker Beth Ann Jones, who was also taken captive,
says the topic of conversation quickly turned to the U.S. assault on
Fallujah where the two groups found common ground.
"They would
be talking and saying my brother's been killed, my father's been killed,"
she said. "They were telling us details so that we could understand
the way that they were feeling, and the obvious resentment they were
feeling towards the occupation. That they were now suffering, and a
year ago they were promised freedom and liberation from the Saddam regime,
and now they're living in a situation where they do not have any freedom."
Back in the relative
safety of Baghdad, Donna Malbun reflects on her temporary captivity.
She does not hold any anger towards her captors.
"Fallujah was
under siege," she says "and even the women and children who
wanted to leave today, and the men, couldn't leave. And the bombardment
from the air was constant, and the sniper activity was constant to the
point where they were so terrified to leave their houses. These people
were being kept captive in their own town and country."
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IPS-Inter Press Service