Journalists tell of US Falluja killings
Thursday 17 March 2005
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.
Disturbing reports:
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."
Targeting media:
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".
Napalm-like weapons:
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."
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6890A8DA-AF79-45AD-BB4F-42C060978A07.htm
---
http://www.ElmerFudd.US/ http://www.notserver.com/
Scientology crooks: http://sf.irk.ru/www/ot3/otiii-gif.html
Scientology murder: http://PerkinsTragedy.org
Improving the herd: http://www.rightard.org/
.
|
