[A-List] Fallujah Cannot Even Bury Its Dead

[Richard Menec <menecraj@xxxxxxx>]

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

Published on Tuesday, April 20, 2004 by the Inter Press Service  
Fallujah Cannot Even Bury Its Dead  
by Aaron Glantz 
  
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."