[Ixa]

Fallujah Cannot Even Bury Its Dead
by Aaron Glantz
IPS-Inter Press Service
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0420-12.htm

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photo:
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)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04 ... 420-03.jpg
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BAGHDAD - 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?"

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."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0420-12.htm