800 Civilians
Feared Dead In Fallujah
By Dahr Jamail
17 November, 2004
Inter Press Service
At
least 800 civilians have been killed during the U.S. military siege
of Fallujah, a Red Cross official estimates.
Speaking on condition
of anonymity for fear of U.S. military reprisal, a high-ranking official
with the Red Cross in Baghdad told IPS that at least 800 civilians
have been killed in Fallujah so far.
His estimate is
based on reports from Red Crescent aid workers stationed around the
embattled city, from residents within the city and from refugees, he
said.
Several of
our Red Cross workers have just returned from Fallujah since the Americans
won't let them into the city, he said. And they said the
people they are tending to in the refugee camps set up in the desert
outside the city are telling horrible stories of suffering and death
inside Fallujah.
The official said
that both Red Cross and Iraqi Red Crescent relief teams had asked the
U.S. military in Fallujah to take in medical supplies to people trapped
in the city, but their repeated requests had been turned down.
A convoy of relief
supplies from both relief organisations continues to wait on the outskirts
of the city for military permission to enter. They have appealed to
the United Nations to intervene on their behalf.
The Americans
close their ears, and that is it, the Red Cross official said.
They won't even let us take supplies into Fallujah General Hospital.
The official estimated
that at least 50,000 residents remain trapped within the city. They
were too poor to leave, lacked friends or family outside the city and
therefore had nowhere to go, or they simply had not had enough time
to escape before the siege began, he said.
Aid workers in his
organisation have reported that houses of civilians in Kharma, a small
city near Fallujah, had been bombed by U.S. warplanes. In one instance
a family of five was killed just two days ago, they reported.
I don't know
why the American leaders did not approach the Red Cross and ask us to
deal with the families properly before the attacking began, said
a Red Cross aid worker, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.
Suddenly they
attacked and people were stuck with no help, no medicine, no food, no
supplies, he said. So those who could, ran for the desert
while the rest were trapped in the city.
If the U.S. forces
would call a temporary cease-fire we could get our trucks in and
get the civilians left in Fallujah who need medical care, we could get
them out, he said.
Mosques have organised
massive collections of food and relief supplies for Fallujah residents
as they did last April when the city was under attack, but these supplies
have not been allowed into the city either.
The Red Cross official
said they had received several reports from refugees that the military
had dropped cluster bombs in Fallujah, and used a phosphorous weapon
that caused severe burns.
The U.S. military
claims to have killed 1,200 insurgents in Fallujah. Abdel
Khader Janabi, a resistance leader from the city has said that only
about 100 among them were fighters.
Both of them
are lying, the Red Cross official said. While they agree
on the 1,200 number, they are both lying about the number of dead fighters.
He added that our estimate of 800 civilians is likely to be too
low.
The situation within
Fallujah is grim, he said. If help does not reach people soon, the
children who are trapped will most likely die.
He said the Ministry
of Health in the U.S.-backed interim Iraqi government had stopped supplying
hospitals and clinics in Fallujah two months before the current siege.
The hospitals
do not even have aspirin, he said. This shows, in my opinion,
that they've had a plan to attack for a long time and were trying to
weaken the people.