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Reports From Iraq > Mon., Apr. 12, 2004
More than 600 Killed in Fallujah
Among those forced to flee the invasion of Fallujah is
this family of 58 which gathered in the city a week ago
to celebrate a wedding. |
by Aaron Glantz
BAGHDAD, IRAQ- The story of Yusuf Fakri Amash is the story
of Fallujah. The 11 year old boy just escaped from Fallujah
with his family. But not before the US 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. He was trying to cross the street and he was hit by
a bullet. The American troops fired the bullet."
Over the weekend -- with more than 600 of Fallujah's residents
dead and thousands injured -- US Administrator Paul Bremer
declared a unilateral cease fire in Fallujah and said the
Americans wanted to give the women and children of Fallujah
a chance to flee the city, but US military snipers remained
on roof-tops and the Marines theater commander declared his
troops retained their right to defend themselves.
But in Fallujah's clinics there's little evidence of a cease
fire: "They said there was a cease-fire," screams
clinic director Mekki al-Azar. "They said 12 o'clock
so people went out, Everyone who went out was shot and this
place was full. Half of them were dead."
Film-maker Julia Guest, who traveled to Fallujah on a convoy
delivering relief supplies tells Pacifica the clinic's ambulance
was shot twice by American snipers -- also during the cease-fire.
The second time the ambulance was shot it was carrying American
and British citizens who had negotiated an agreement with
the marines to rescue the injured from an area with heavy
US sniper fire.
"It has blue sirens," she recalls. "Its donated
by the Kingdom of Spain. It's 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."
At the same time, the resistance continues to gain steam.
*****
Gunfire - an ambulance rushes to the scene as an American
tank burns on the main road to Fallujah. Every day more Iraqi's
take up arms against the occupation disgusted at mounting
civilian casualties in Fallujah and the South of Iraq where
the US military is fighting the Mehdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr.
Ibrahim Hassen is 40 years old. He fled the city with his
wife and three children on Friday. An American bomb had destroyed
his neighbors house and killed three people inside, but the
final straw was when he was shot by snipers during the cease
fire as he went to get food aid from a neighborhood mosque.
Now, for the first time, Ibrahim Hassen says he's going to
pick up a gun and fight the Americans.
"When I see my neighbors, the house collapsed on his
head. In all the streets where I live all the houses were
destroyed."
"I will take revenge on the United States," he
promises. "Until the last breath that I have."
( In nearby Abu Grahib, Amar abu Zaid and his family of 58
have taken shelter in a relatives house. The family had gathered
together in Fallujah from all over Iraq before the bombing
began.
"This is my daughter who was getting married to my nephew,"
he explains. "We had to celebrate that. We called it
a challenge wedding celebration. Last night, after the wedding,
when we got out of Fallujah on the road back one of our women
was pregnant and she started to give birth so we couldn't
take her to a hospital. She gave birth in the car. A son was
born and we named him Mujahad or Holy Warrior and I ask God
for him to be a mujahad."
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