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EXCLUSIVE: Al Jazeera Reporters Give Bloody First Hand Account
of April ’04 U.S. Siege of Fallujah
EXCLUSIVE: Al Jazeera Reporters Give Bloody First
Hand Account of April ’04 U.S. Siege of Fallujah
In April 2004, the United States launched its first assault
on Fallujah, the Sunni town west of Baghdad that had come
to symbolize Iraqi resistance to the U.S. occupation. The
offensive came a few days after four American military contractors
from the private security firm Blackwater were brutally killed
in the city.
The siege was one of the bloodiest assaults of the US occupation.
In two weeks that April, thirty marines were killed as local
guerillas resisted U.S. attempts to capture the city. Some
600 Iraqis died and over 1,000 were wounded. While the U.S.
military claimed at the time that the vast majority of those
killed were members of the resistance, media reports from
within Fallujah indicated a large number of civilians were
among the dead.
Al Jazeera was one of the few news outlets broadcasting from
inside the besieged city, and its exclusive footage was being
broadcast by every network from CNN to the BBC. Al Jazeera’s
Ahmed Mansur and his cameraman Laith Mushtaq were inside Fallujah,
reporting unembedded from the streets for the entire siege.
In this Democracy Now! exclusive, they speak about their experience
for the first time in an in-depth interview. [includes rush
transcript - partial]
We sat down with them in Doha, Qatar earlier this month.
The interview is translated by Al Jazeera interpreter Ali
Matar. For our television audience, please be warned some
of the images you are about to see are graphic.
- Ahmed Mansur, Al Jazeera Correspondent
- Laith Mushtaq, Al Jazeera Cameraman
Al Jazeera
English Homepage
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Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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