Iraq Body Count urgently needs your support to keep track of casualties - help us with a donation now

 

Reference

Falluja Archive Oct 2004

Falluja Table - April 19

Tables with IBC-extracted news, by date:

Apr 03 - Apr 04 - Apr 05 - Apr 06 - Apr 07 - Apr 08 - Apr 09 - Apr 10 - Apr 11 - Apr 12 - Apr 13 - Apr 14 - Apr 15 - Apr 16 - Apr 17 - Apr 18 - Apr 19 - Apr 20 - Apr 21 - Apr 22 - Apr 23 - Apr 24 - Apr 25 - Apr 26 - Apr 27 - Apr 28 - Apr 29 - Apr 30 - May 01 - May 02 - May 03 - May 04 - May 05 - May 06 - May 07 - May 08 - May 09 - May 10 - May 11 - May 14 - May 21 - Jun 03 - Jun 25 - Jul 19 - Return to Index page

IBC Extracted Falluja News - April 19

News Source
-
Author
-
Title

Agence France-Presse
-
Paul Peachey
-
US OFFERS PEACE, WITH A MAJOR CONDITION

Specific incidents / deaths

 

Date killed?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter

 

Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

 

Date range?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis

The occupation force announced it was halting offensive operations in the flashpoint Iraqi city of Fallujah on Monday under an agreement that will end a two-week siege by United States marines following the killing of four American contractors.

The occupation said its troops would start joint patrols with Iraqi security forces following several days of talks with leaders in the Sunni Muslim insurgent bastion.

...

The agreement also reiterated the need to restore law and order with the police and paramilitary forces being reformed as a matter of urgency.

...

The agreement also reiterated the need to restore law and order with the police and paramilitary forces being reformed as a matter of urgency.

The investigation into the killing and mutilation of the four US contractors last month and an attack on a police station in March will be carried out by local police.

The American government had previously demanded the handover of the killers as part of any solution to the bloody standoff in the city west of Baghdad that has become a byword for anti-American resistance.



US/military viewpoint

"Those who give up their weapons voluntarily will not be prosecuted for weapons violations and unarmed individuals will not be attacked," Senor told reporters.

"The parties agreed that coalition forces do not intend to resume offensive operations if all people in the city turn in their heavy weapons."

...

"The parties reaffirmed the absolute need to restore law and order in the city as quickly as possible, to rebuild the judicial system and to initiate investigations into criminal acts," Senor said.

He said local security agencies including the police and civil defence forces, with occupation support, "must move to eliminate remaining foreign fighters, criminals and drug users in order for stability and security to occur."

News Source
-
Author
-
Title
New York Times
-
JOHN F. BURNS and CHRISTINE HAUSER
-
BREMER IS INCREASING PRESSURE FOR A QUICK END TO IRAQI UPRISINGS
Specific incidents / deaths  
Date killed?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

Unofficial counts based on tallies taken at hospitals and morgues have put Iraqi casualties so far in April, including insurgents and civilians, at about 1,000 killed.

Date range?  
Total about 1,000 (countrywide, 'including insurgents and civilians')
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis  
US/military viewpoint

With no sign of a breakthrough in talks with rebels in Falluja and Najaf, the leader of the American occupation appeared to move closer on Sunday to a military showdown, saying that the rebels' failure to submit to American demands would require decisive action against those who "want to shoot their way to power."

"They must be dealt with, and they will be dealt with," the administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, said, breaking a week of silence on the confrontation with Moktada al-Sadr, an anti-American Shiite cleric, in Najaf and Sunni Muslim insurgents in Falluja.

News Source
-
Author
-
Title

CommonDreams.org
-
Rahul Mahajan
-
REPORT FROM BAGHDAD -- HOSPITAL CLOSINGS AND U.S. WAR CRIMES

Specific incidents / deaths  
Date killed?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Cumulative deaths [and injuries] While the American media talks of the great restraint and "pinpoint precision" of the American attack, over 700 people, at least half of them civilians, have been killed in Fallujah.
Date range?  
Total 700+
Civilian / Fighter 'at least half of them civilians'
Selected info, comment, analysis

"Why do you keep asking about the closing of the Fallujah hospital?" my Iraqi translator asks in exasperation. I explain that this is big news, and it hasn't really been reported in English. He looks at me, incredulous; all Iraqis know about it.

When the United States began the siege of Fallujah, it targeted civilians in several ways. The power station was bombed; perhaps even more important, the bridge across the Euphrates was closed. Fallujah's main hospital stands on the western bank of the river; almost the entirety of the town is on the east side. Although the hospital was not technically closed, no doctor who actually believes in the Hippocratic oath is going to sit in an empty hospital while people are dying in droves on the other bank of the river. So the doctors shut down the hospital, took the limited supplies and equipment they could carry, and started working at a small three-room outpatient clinic, doing operations on the ground and losing patients because of the inadequacy of the setup. This event was not reported in English until April 14, when the bridge was reopened.

...

There are also persistent claims that after an outbreak of hostilities American soldiers visit hospitals asking for information about the wounded, with the intent of removing potential resistance members and interrogating them. Nomaan Hospital in Aadhamiyah and Yarmouk Hospital in Yarmouk (both areas of Baghdad) got visits from U.S. forces in the first days after the fighting in Fallujah started -- the lion's share of evacuated wounded from Fallujah were taken to those two hospitals. Doctors generally resist being turned into informants for the occupation; one doctor actually told me that he has many times discharged people straight from the emergency room, with inadequate time to recuperate, just to keep them out of military custody. As he said, "They are my countrymen. How can I hold them for the Americans?"

...

By any reasonable standard, these hospital closings (and, of course, the shooting at ambulances) are war crimes.
However afraid the Plus Ultra garrison may have been of attack from the rooftops, they didn't have to close the hospital; they could simply have screened entrants. In the case of Fallujah, it's clear that one of the reasons the mujahideen were willing to talk about ceasefire was to get the hospital open again; in effect, the United States was holding civilians (indirectly) hostage for military ends.

After an earlier article about attacks on ambulances, many people wrote to ask why U.S. forces would do this -- it conflicted with the image they wanted to have of the U.S. military. Were they just trying to massacre civilians? And, if so, why?

In fact, it's fairly simple: the United States has its military goals and simply does not care how many Iraqi civilians have to be killed in order to maximize the military efficiency of their operations. A senior British army commander recently criticized the Americans for viewing the Iraqis as Untermenschen -- a lower order of human being. He also said the average soldier views all Iraqis as enemies or potential enemies. That is precisely the case. I have heard the same thing from dozens of people here -- "They don't care what happens to Iraqis."

Although this relatively indiscriminate killing of civilians may serve American military ends -- keeping the ratio of enemy dead to American soldiers dead as high as possible -- in terms of political ends, it is a disaster. It is very difficult to explain to an Iraqi that a man fighting from his own town with a Kalashnikov or RPG launcher is a "coward" and a "war criminal" (because, apparently, he should go out into the desert and wait to be annihilated from the sky) but that someone dropping 2000-pound bombs on residential areas or shooting at ambulances because they may have guns in them (even though they usually don't) is a hero and is following the laws of war.

...

Before, the occupation might have succeeded -- not in building real democracy, which was never the goal, but in cementing U.S. control of Iraq. It cannot succeed now. The resistance in Fallujah will be beaten down, with the commission of more war crimes; if the United States invades Najaf, it will be able to win militarily there as well. But from now on, no military victory will make Iraqis stop resisting.

US/military viewpoint  
News Source
-
Author
-
Title
Guardian
-
Rory McCarthy
-
CHILDREN HIT BY 'RANDOM SHOOTING'
Specific incidents / deaths

Doctors said 102 patients from Falluja, of whom 14 had since died, had been admitted to the surgical hospital at Medical City, most of them civilians.

...

"There were many civilians, there were women. I saw one woman who was pregnant and there was shrapnel in her abdomen from a shell. Her baby died," he said.

Date killed?  
Total 14
(in Baghdad hospital, including baby in womb, from shrapnel)
Civilian / Fighter 'most of them civilians'
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

Dozens of civilians, including children, are among the 600 or more Iraqis who have been killed and injured in the past two weeks of bombing and ground operations by the US marines trying to retake Falluja, doctors and witnesses say.

Date range? 5th-19th
Total 600 'or more'
Civilian / Fighter 'dozens of civlians'
Selected info, comment, analysis

In the intensive care unit at Medical City hospital in Baghdad Yusuf Fayar Ali said his son Mohammad, 12, was shot through the mouth when troops attacked gunmen in his village, al-Na'amiya just south of Falluja, last week. The boy, seriously ill, is on a ventilator.

"The fighting lasted for an hour and we tried to take our women and children away out of the house," he said.

"We were hiding in the trees by the Euphrates. My son was hiding in a small furrow between the trees. He lifted up his head and suddenly a bullet hit him through the cheek. I am sure it was an American bullet."

In the next bed a young girl called Iftihal has a bullet lodged inside her skull. She was injured in the same attack when US troops crossed the river to her village, Amariya.

"The Americans were just shooting, there was no specific target," her father Ismail Obaid, 51, said. "We were inside the house - the bullet came through the door and hit her in the head."

"The Americans came to our area and were shooting randomly and that is why a lot of civilians were injured," he said.

...

A surgeon who spent five days helping treat the injured in Falluja last week said he had seen dozens of injured women and children.

"We had a clinic with two operating rooms. It was the worst place in Iraq to deal with a patient," said the doctor. He was too frightened to give his name.


...

He said the civilian casualties began to decrease after the first week, because many families left the city when the ceasefire began.

US/military viewpoint

Last week Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, accused the Arabic television station al-Jazeera of "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable" reporting for suggesting hundreds of civilians had died there. "It's just outrageous nonsense," he said.

News Source
-
Author
-
Title

Associated Press
-
BASSEM MROUE
-
CIVILIAN DEATHS ANGER FALLUJAH REFUGEES

Specific incidents / deaths Fleeing the city of Fallujah in their car, 9-year-old Gofran Mohammed's parents and three of her siblings were killed by a spray of gunfire - U.S. fire, her relatives say. Now Gofran, wounded in the attack, is huddled with other Fallujah families in Baghdad who vow never to forgive the Americans.

...

Gofran's parents were among the refugees. Fed up with the battles and the lack of food, they loaded their seven children and a young cousin of the kids into their car April 9.

As they drove from their southern neighborhood of Nazzal, their car was riddled with bullets by American troops, said Gofran's uncle, Ahmed Elewy, who buried the bodies of his brother's family and then escaped the city four days after the shooting. It was not possible to confirm independently that U.S. fire killed the family.

...

"Bullets started hitting the car," said Gofran, who had shrapnel wounds near her right eye and right knee. "The glass was shattered, and my mother and father died. My younger brother's brain was blown out of his head."

Her 5-year-old sister, Amal, was hit with three bullets and died. Another sister, Saja, 11, was also killed.

"I started screaming 'Dad, Mom' but received no answer. ... I was screaming and crying in the car. Then I started feeling the pain of my wounds," she said.

Two hours later, an ambulance picked up Gofran and the other wounded siblings.

The dead were buried in one grave in a Fallujah soccer field where hundreds have been buried. The family plans to rebury them after things settle down, said Yasser, Gofran's half brother.

Date killed? 9th
Total 2 (parents of 9-yr-old Gofran Mohammed) + 1 (her younger brother) + 1 (her sister Amal, 5) + 1 (sister Saja, 11) = 5
Civilian / Fighter 5/0
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]  
Date range?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis  
US/military viewpoint  
News Source
-
Author
-
Title
Los Angeles Times
-
Alissa J. Rubin
-
CARNAGE DIMS HOPES FOR POLITICAL WAY
Specific incidents / deaths  
Date killed?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]  
Date range?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis

The moves on Fallujah, which Marines besieged two weeks ago, and especially on Najaf, where anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr has taken refuge, are pushing many Iraqis to choose sides between the occupation force and other Iraqis. Enduring religious animosities have been put aside as the more radical Sunnis and Shiites join to fight a new common enemy: the United States.

"If we force them to choose, they will choose their own," said a senior official in the U.S.-led coalition.

Although the military situation calmed last week, the reality on the ground was, if anything, more disturbing than the week before.

For foreigners -- troops, diplomats, contractors rebuilding the country, and journalists -- kidnappings became a daily occurrence. Shootings of people who look non-Arab -- regardless of whether they were Western, Asian or African -- became routine.

...

In some measure, the violence against Westerners is viewed as retribution for the violence in Fallujah. Whether that is true or not, belief that Americans behaved as barbarians and that thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead is widespread. According to Arab custom and especially tribal tradition, they should be avenged.

...

"Now all the people, even the most ignorant, believe the only solution is resistance. The Americans are killing children, destroying homes, killing women," said Sheik Bilal Habashi, who runs a mosque in a Sunni-dominated neighborhood of Baghdad, near the road to Fallujah.

"The Americans want to enter Fallujah as invaders. When an invader wants to enter a city, the people start defending their city, even the women," he said.

...

There is less violence in Fallujah now as well, but the city remains tense. No one believes the trouble is over. The U.S. is determined to root out the fighters, and it is clear that hundreds -- if not a couple of thousand -- are still there.

...

Bessam Jarrah is a slight, soft-spoken man who is willing to criticize violence by Iraqis. A general surgeon, he has spent much of the last two weeks coordinating efforts of the Islamic League of Medical Professionals, which has been sending volunteer physicians to treat the wounded in Fallouja. He had high hopes for the U.S. role in Iraq, but they have drained away.

"In the first months of the occupation, we, the educated people, thought America would show us a humanitarian way, a political way, to solve problems," Jarrah said. "But this use of force means the efforts to find a political solution for Iraq has failed, and now America is using Saddam's approach to problems: brute force.

"America won the war on April 9 last year; they lost the war on April 9 this year. That is what Iraqis feel."

US/military viewpoint  

[top of page]