Falluja's April
Civilian Toll Is 600
By Iraq Body
Count
28 October, 2004
Iraq Body Count
The Iraq Body Count
(IBC) came out with a shocking revelation of the civilian dealth toll
in the April 2004 siege of Falluja. The analysis published on its website
leads to the conclusion that betweeen 572 and 616 of the approximately
800 reported deaths were of civilians, with over 300 of these being
women and children.
A
Falluja Archive carrying relevant and related excerpts from
nearly three hundred contemporary news reports is also being made available
on the website, and constitutes the largest publicly-available resource
for investigators researching the human consequences of the siege. IBC's
number for the civilian dead emerges from detailed and exhaustive analysis
of these reports as well as others more recently published.
Press spokesman,
John Sloboda said "Data recently released to the public by the
Iraqi Health Ministry has allowed IBC to resolve a problem we have been
struggling with for months: how to reconcile casualty figures reported
by local doctors of 800 total dead with a much lower estimate (280 dead)
produced in short order by the Iraqi Health Ministry (IHM), soon after
US Gen. Mark Kimmitt told the press that the CPA would ask the Ministry
to 'get a fair, honest and credible' figure. Details
of our analysis are provided on the website, but it now appears
incontrovertible that the IHM estimate was quietly withdrawn once media
attention moved away from Falluja, leading us to conclude that their
estimate was acknowledged to be flawed".
The IBC totals are
based on multiply-cited reports from doctors and eyewitnesses that no
less than 308 of those killed were women and children. This number demonstrates
the huge impact of US attacks on civilian areas, and allows the conclusion
to be drawn that many of the males killed must also have been non-combatants.
There are clear
reports of 600 people killed in total up until April 12th, most of them
killed before US forces began to permit women and children to be evacuated
from the town. Civilian totals have been derived by assuming a conservative
ratio of one civilian adult male killed for every woman killed prior
to April 12th, and by using the minimum-maximum range to account for
differing possible numbers of women and children remaining in the targeted
areas after the exodus had begun.
The project's Principal
Researcher, Hamit Dardagan, commented "The unique IBC Falluja Archive
allows members of the public to examine for themselves the multiple
violations which yielded this shocking toll. These include attacks on
ambulances and sniper fire at children as well as the aerial bombardment
of residential areas. Talk of "precision strikes" is mere
techno-babble when these are part of military campaigns causing thousands
of civilian deaths and injuries.
"The failed
US attempt to "pacify" Falluja via "overwhelming"
military means was first and foremost a disaster for its civilian population.
The fact that it also embarrassed those who ordered it is of little
sigificance in comparison, except in one regard. Current US plans to
launch a "final assault" on Falluja, supported by back filling
from UK troops, suggest that we can expect another human catastrophe
whose scale no one can judge in advance but which will certainly result
in the destruction of innocent lives. The question planners in Washington,
London and Baghdad - and the public at large - need to consider is this:
are the next attacks being planned as a true measure of last resort?
If not, it is not just mass slaughter that is being contemplated here,
but mass murder."
John Sloboda [email protected]
Hamit Dardagan [email protected]