Smoke And corpses
By Fadhil Badrani
12 November, 2004
BBC
Eye Witness Account
From Falluja
US bomber aircraft have been supporting
ground forces in Falluja
A row of palm trees
used to run along the street outside my house - now only the trunks
are left.
The upper half of
each tree has vanished, blown away by mortar fire.
From my window,
I can also make out that the minarets of several mosques have been toppled.
There are more and
more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbearable.
Smoke is everywhere.
A house some doors
from mine was hit during the bombardment on Wednesday night. A 13-year-old
boy was killed. His name was Ghazi.
I tried to flee
the city last night but I could not get very far. It was too dangerous.
I am getting used
to the bombardment. I have learnt to sleep through the noise - the smaller
bombs no longer bother me.
Without water and
electricity, we feel completely cut off from everyone else.
I only found out
Yasser Arafat had died because the BBC rang me.
It is hard to know
how much people outside Falluja are aware of what is going on here.
I want them to know
about conditions inside this city - there are dead women and children
lying on the streets.
People are getting
weaker from hunger. Many are dying from their injuries because there
is no medical help left in the city whatsoever.
Some families have
started burying their dead in their gardens.
There has been a
lot of resistance in Jolan.
The Americans have
taken over several high-rise buildings overlooking the district.
But the height has
not helped them control the area because the streets of Jolan are very
narrow and you cannot fire into them directly.
The US military moves along the main roads and avoids the side-streets.
The soldiers do not leave their armoured vehicles and tanks.
If they get fired
on, they fire back from their tanks or call in air-strikes.
I saw some Iraqi
government soldiers on the ground earlier.
I don't know which
part of the country these soldiers are from. They are definitely not
from any of the western provinces such as al-Anbar.
I have heard people
say they are from Kurdistan.
They are well co-ordinated.
When the US forces pull back from an area, the Iraqi soldiers will take
over there.
Fadhil Badrani
is an Iraqi journalist and resident of Falluja who reports regularly
for Reuters and the BBC World Service in Arabic.