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Reference

Falluja Archive Oct 2004

Falluja Table - April 23

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IBC Extracted Falluja News - April 23

News Source
-
Author
-
Title
North County Times
-
Hayne Palmour
-
CIVILIANS CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE GET HURT
Specific incidents / deaths

Date killed?  
Total

 

Civilian / Fighter

 

Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

 

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

In the days after combat erupted at this battle-torn edge of Fallujah on April 5, Marine mortars fired volley after volley of high explosives and burning white phosphorous around their home in the grove where the Marines say rebels had taken up positions and fired on troops.

U.S. helicopters fired missiles and strafed the grove with heavy machine guns.

At night, an AC-130 Spectre gunship pounded the tree line with deadly blasts from howitzers and Gatlin guns.

And American fighter jets dropped bomb after 500-pound bomb on the block, nearly leveling buildings adjacent to the al-Basit home.

At the time, the Marines who controlled the barrage insisted that there were "no friendlies" in the area and that they were cleared to fire at will.

But just hours after the last 500-pound bomb fell, Staff Sgt. Earnest Cardenas, whose platoon occupied a large house near the site, said he was amazed to see boys pop out near the rubble and start kicking around a soccer ball.

US/military viewpoint

"It was terrible that here we were, trying to lead them to safety, and then enemy mortars end up hitting them," said Lt. Ross Schellhaas, a Marine officer who has shown a particular concern for Iraqi civilians around Fallujah. "I don't think they care (about civilians), but it was us they were after."

News Source
-
Author
-
Title
Agence France-Presse
-
2021 hrs Time is GMT + 8 hours
-
RADICAL IRAQ CLERIC THREATENS SUICIDE ATTACKS
Specific incidents / deaths  
Date killed?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

Tensions remained high in Fallujah but Iraqi authorities Friday sharply downgraded the death toll from this month's fighting there that followed the slaying of four US contractors on March 31, two of whom were mutilated by angry mobs.

"Between April 5 until Thursday (April 22) at 9 a.m. (0500 GMT) according to official health ministry figures, 271 people were killed and 793 wounded," Iraq's interim health minister Khodayir Abbas told AFP, adding that the casualties were "Iraqi martyrs."

...

Iraqi mediators and hospital officials had previously said that some 600 to 700 people had died during the bloodiest fighting since the US-led invasion in March last year.

Date range? 5th-22nd
Total 271
[793 wounded]
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis  
US/military viewpoint  
News Source
-
Author
-
Title
New Standard
-
Dahr Jamail
-
FALLUJAH RESIDENTS REPORT U.S. FORCES ENGAGED IN COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT
Specific incidents / deaths

Abdul Aziz, the 15 year-old son of Abu Muher, stated, "I saw two of my neighbors shot by US snipers when I went outside one time. I also saw some of the small cluster bombs on the ground that were dropped by the warplanes of the Americans. Most times, we were too afraid even to look out of our windows."

...

The AP further reported that 20 Iraqis and no Americans were killed in the overnight skirmishes.

Date killed? pre-17th; 22nd-23rd ('overnight')
Total 2 (neighbours of Abdul Aziz shot by US snipers) + 20 (in 'overnight skirmishes') = 22
Civilian / Fighter  
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

"We have at least 700 dead from the fighting," [Islamic Party spokesman] Mujahed reported from inside Fallujah. "So many of them are children and women. The stench from the dead bodies in parts of the city is unbearable."

Date range? 5th-23rd?
Total 'at least 700
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis

Refugees streamed out of Fallujah when fighting began after United States Marines placed the city under siege, cut off power supplies and began an invasion of the city. Resistance forces referred to by locals as mujahideen fought back, killing scores of US troops. Americans killed hundreds of Iraqi civilians, plus an unknown number of Iraqi fighters.

...

Abu Muher said US warplanes were bombing the city heavily last Saturday prior to his departure, and that Marine snipers continued to take their toll, shot after shot, on residents of the besieged city. "There were so many snipers, anyone leaving their house was killed," he recalled.

Abu Muher, along with two other men from Fallujah who arrived in Baghdad last weekend, said American warplanes had dropped cluster bombs on a road behind their houses in Fallujah. One of the men was too afraid to permit his name to be used in this article. "My neighbors saw the bomblets," he said, "and I heard the horrible sound that only the cluster bombs make when they are dropped on us. My home was hit by their shrapnel. I was too afraid to leave my home to look for myself because of the snipers."

...

According to official US military statements, ambulances are being escorted into Fallujah on a regular basis. Reached for comment earlier this week, Christy Clemmons of the Coalition Provisional Authority press center for Iraq's Ministry of Health insisted emergency vehicles were reaching the city. "We are working with the Ministry of Health and have so far permitted 46 ambulances to Fallujah," she said. "The US military are escorting the ambulances since in the past they have been commandeered by insurgents and used to attack US soldiers."

Iraq Red Crescent Secretary General Faris Hamed told The NewStandard on Monday that no Red Crescent ambulances had been allowed into Fallujah since April 13, during the peak of fighting in the city. Hamed has been unreachable for an updated report.

...

[Islamic Party spokesman] Mujahed stated that yesterday the US military broke the supposed ceasefire by staging an incursion into the Julan neighborhood as well as the Industrial sector of Fallujah. He added, "This is a disaster! Only a few people can get to the main hospital because the Americans are controlling it. Snipers are firing into Julan and killing so many civilians."

US/military viewpoint

The lockdown war ordered despite reports from Fallujah residents that many of the mujahideen have turned their weapons over to Iraqi Police as a condition of the ceasefire edict. Lt. Col. Byrne told the AP most of the weapons turned over in accordance with US demands were unusable and did not comply with the Marines' insistence on acquiring all of Fallujah's heavy weaponry.

In retaliation for the fighters' noncompliance, Byrne said the Marines would not permit any of the hundreds of Iraqis lined up at a nearby checkpoint to return to their homes, at least for the time being.

News Source
-
Author
-
Title
Reuters
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Fadel Badran
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RESIDENTS RETURN TO VOLATILE FALLUJAH
Specific incidents / deaths

With guns quiet in Fallujah, people dug bodies from demolished homes and displaced civilians trickled back to the city on Friday despite United States warnings that a truce with Sunni rebels may not last.

About 20 volunteers shifted through rubble with picks and shovels to extract bodies from houses flattened in fierce fighting between US Marines and insurgents earlier this month.

Witnesses said three bodies had been recovered from the city's battered Golan district. Seven were found on Thursday.

Date killed? 22nd;23rd
Total 3 (bodies found in rubble, 23rd); 7 (22nd) = 10
Civilian / Fighter  
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

Local doctors say more than 600 people were killed during a Marine crackdown in Fallujah launched on April 5, a few days after four US security officials were killed and mutilated there.

Date range? 5th-22nd?
Total 600+
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis

A fragile truce, punctuated by clashes, has held this week, but a US general said on Thursday the rebels had "days not weeks" to turn in their heavy weapons under a peace deal reached with Fallujah civic leaders, or face a renewed US offensive.

US/military viewpoint  
News Source
-
Author
-
Title
Sydney Morning Herald
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Evelyn Leopold
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GRAFT TALK ON IRAQ OIL PROMPTS UN REVIEW
Specific incidents / deaths  
Date killed?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Health Ministry has released the first detailed accounting of Iraqi casualties in the fighting that erupted across the country this month. According to the figures, 264 have been killed and 791 wounded in the Falluja area since April 5, while in Baghdad 235 have been killed and 832 wounded.

The figures are the first to be disclosed by an official source with access to hospital records nationwide and show the nationwide death toll as being substantially lower than widely reported figures.

Date range? 5th-22nd?
Total 264
[791 wounded]
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis  
US/military viewpoint  
News Source
-
Author
-
Title
Media Monitors Network
-
Oussama El-Mohtar
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"FROM MASS GRAVES TO MASSACRES"
Specific incidents / deaths  
Date killed?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Cumulative deaths [and injuries] The majority of the six hundred people killed and more than three thousand wounded in Fallujah in one week alone were civilians, neither combatants nor terrorists.
Date range? 5th-11th
Total 600
[3000+ wounded]
Civilian / Fighter 'majority' civilian
Selected info, comment, analysis

The citizens of Fallujah are demanding that the Americans hand over the pilots who bombed residential areas in exchange for those who mutilated the bodies of four American private security experts, all employees of "Blackwater,"  an American mercenary company [1]. This is indicative of the level of destruction the Americans have done there.

It was only a few months ago that the Iraqis unearthed the remains of their loved ones from Saddam's mass graves. Now they are burying the victims of American massacres in a soccer field.

US/military viewpoint  
News Source
-
Author
-
Title
BBC
-
14:30 GMT 15:30 UK
-
PICTURE EMERGES OF FALLUJA SIEGE
Specific incidents / deaths

Iraqi doctor Salam al-Obaidi, a member of the Doctors for Iraq humanitarian society, worked in Falluja for six days during the fighting.

Speaking to BBC News Online, he described seeing colleagues blown up in an ambulance - also clearly marked - travelling in front of him as his team tried to enter a US-controlled area.

"I saw the ambulance disappear - not all of it, but the front of it, the side where the driver and paramedic were," he said.

He said he and two more colleagues were injured in a second explosion. He still does not know the fate of the two people in the first ambulance.

In a separate incident, Dr Obaidi said, a driver and paramedic in an ambulance were shot in a US-controlled area - one in the chest, the other in the eyes.

The injured civilians inside the ambulance bled to death during the next two days as warning shots were fired when the team tried - four times - to return to collect the ambulance, he said.

...

Dr Obaidi said he had seen the bodies of two men, one aged about 70, the other about 50, both shot in the forehead, in an area controlled by the US.

They had been lying at the front gate of their home for two days, he said, because the family did not dare step outside to retrieve the bodies.

Is he sure they were shot by US troops?

"You are joking?" he said. "There are people dead in an area just controlled by America snipers. Nobody, either civilian or resistance, could enter the area. Who could kill them? We know American bullets. We are not a stupid people."

Date killed? pre-23rd
Total 2
(70 and 50 year-old men shot by US snipers)
Civilian / Fighter 2/0
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

The Iraqi death toll from the siege has been strongly contested. Local doctors have been widely quoted as saying at least 600 people died.

Mr Obaidi believes the total to be at least 750, not including those buried in gardens or other unofficial grave sites.

The Iraqi Health Minister, Khodair Abbas, said on Thursday that 271 people died and local doctors had been pressured to give inflated figures.

The proportion of these who were civilians is impossible to verify.

Date range? 5th-22nd (IHM)
Total 600
(earlier-quoted local doctors);
750
(Dr Obaidi); 271
(I.H. Minister)
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis

The head of mission of a European humanitarian agency with staff in Falluja told BBC News Online that, according to his staff, two of their ambulances had been shot at.

"By who? The probability is by US snipers," he said.

Asked whether these were warning or attacking shots, he said: "One was shot two or three times - a sniper does not shoot an ambulance three times by mistake."

...

Hospital access:

The US has also faced criticism for blocking access to the city's main hospital by, according to most reports, occupying the river bridge which linked it to the rest of the city.

"If this hospital was working it would have saved a lot of lives," Medecins Sans Frontieres' Emergency Coordinator for Iraq Ibrahim Younis said.

US/military viewpoint

US officials say their operations have been "extraordinarily precise".

Gen. Sanchez said civilian casualties were "absolutely regrettable", but were a fact on a "battlefield of this nature in an urban environment".

Gen. Kimmit, also blamed militants who "hunker down inside mosques and hospitals and schools, and use the women and children as shields" for the civilian suffering.

News Source
-
Author
-
Title
Agence France-Presse
-
FALLUJAH SIEGE CIVILIAN DEATH TOLL 271: IRAQI OFFICIAL
Specific incidents / deaths  
Date killed?  
Total  
Civilian / Fighter  
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

A total of 271 Iraqis have been killed and 793 wounded in Fallujah since US marines laid siege to Fallujah on April 5, interim health minister Khodayir Abbas has said.

"Between April 5 until Thursday [April 22] at 9:00am (local time) according to official health ministry figures, 271 people were killed and 793 wounded," Mr Abbas told AFP, adding that the casualties were "Iraqi martyrs".

...

"Our sources are credible because they are based on figures given by hospitals, clinics and doctors who have to declare the number of dead and wounded in their establishments," Mr Abbas said.

The Fallujah figure contrasted with earlier reports Iraqi negotiators said they gathered from hospitals which put the death toll at 600.

Date range? 5th-22nd (A.M.)
Total 271
[793 wounded] (IHM)
Civilian / Fighter  
Selected info, comment, analysis

Despite the "truce", the two sides have engaged in a fierce battle in which the marines said they killed 36 insurgents on Wednesday.

...

A spokesman for the Sunni Muslim clerics involved in the negotiations claimed US forces' compliance with the ceasefire agreement was unsatisfactory.

Muthanna Hareh Dari said on Thursday the Americans "fabricate pretexts to put pressure on the population."

Following Wednesday's fighting, US forces have halted the return to Fallujah of families displaced by the violence. The Americans had planned to allow the daily return of 50 families.

US/military viewpoint

Coalition military officials claim the uprising is instigated by about 200 "foreign fighters" holed up in Fallujah.

News Source
-
Author
-
Title
Los Angeles Times
-
Tony Perry and Patrick J. McDonnell
-
MARINES WARN OF BATTLE IN FALLOUJA



Specific incidents / deaths

On Wednesday, Marines fought a five-hour battle in the northwestern part of the city after a patrol was attacked. Three troops were wounded in the fight; at least 36 insurgents were killed and dozens more are thought to have been wounded, Marine officials said.

Date killed? 22nd
Total 36 ('insurgents')
Civilian / Fighter 0/36
Cumulative deaths [and injuries]

On Thursday, the Iraqi Health Ministry said at least 219 Iraqis had died in fighting in the area of Fallouja and nearby Ramadi between April 5 and April 22. The dead included 24 women and 28 children, it said. Nearly 700 people were injured, it said.

...

U.S. officials said they were unfamiliar with the methodology of the report and declined to comment further.

Date range? 5th-22nd
Total

219
(includes Ramadi!)
['nearly' 700 injured]

Civilian / Fighter 24 children, 28 women
Selected info, comment, analysis

For the insurgents who want to drive the U.S. out of Iraq, Fallouja has become the embodiment of their fight, a rallying cry that has drawn unknown numbers of new recruits into the guerrilla war against the U.S.-led occupation and Washington's blueprint for a Western-style democratic government in the country.

Between 1,000 and 2,000 Iraqi and foreign fighters are believed to be gathered in the city, though officials stress that the numbers are rough estimates.

As for the Iraqi public, the level of civilian casualties in the last three weeks - and the prospect of more deaths - has eroded support, even among moderates, for the U.S.-led effort.

...

Marine brass wanted a solution that included insurgents voluntarily relinquishing their weapons and Iraqi police and the Civil Defense Corps returning to provide security. Many of those security officers fled the city when the fighting began, and the defection was a major disappointment to U.S. officials, who see police, Defense Corps members and the new Iraqi army as the successors to U.S. troops.

"We know that the sooner we can put an Iraqi face on security, the sooner people [will] gain self-respect and put their own situation back to normal [and] the sooner we can recede off the horizon," Conway said.

...

About 350 officers and corps members returned to duty Tuesday and Wednesday, and several hundred waited in a lengthy line Thursday to re-register for duty and thus be restored to the payroll.

Each man was asked whether he would be willing to patrol alongside U.S. troops - a key goal of the Marines in a city where security forces have for months resisted working in proximity to Americans, fearing retribution from opponents of the occupation. Police and corps members who said they were unwilling to work with U.S. troops were not taken back.

...

Law enforcement authorities waiting to be interviewed by the Marines said they were eager to get back to work and arrest the thieves who were stealing from homes and businesses.

But when asked to place the blame for the fighting, they were equivocal.

"The Americans came and the planes killed people," said Nori Hamad, an Iraqi police officer in Fallouja. "We want to protect our town, but too many people are dying."

Added another police officer, Ayad Naji: "Since the Americans came, there is no water, nothing to eat, no electricity. Many children have died because of the airplanes."

Civil corpsman Adil Firah said the Marines were keeping people from fulfilling their religious obligations.

"The Americans shoot at people and we cannot attend mosque," he said. "The thieves come from outside of Fallouja. We can take care of them, without the Americans."

US/military viewpoint

The Marine offensive in Fallouja began April 5 after four U.S. civilian security contractors were slain there in March and their bodies mutilated - an act that U.S. officials believed called for a swift and decisive response.

The negotiations aimed at breaking the deadlock do not involve the insurgents directly. U.S. authorities are talking with a group of national officials from Baghdad, Fallouja town leaders and Sunni Muslim clerics who are thought to have influence with the fighters - an assumption questioned Thursday by Conway.

"When we entered negotiations with prominent people around the city, we had every hope that they could argue reasonably for a peaceful solution," the general told reporters. "That said, we are somewhat questioning if they represent the people of Fallouja, because it is our estimate that the people of Fallouja have not responded well to the agreement."

...

"We lose the IO [information operations] battle in this city," said Col. John Toolan, commander of the 1st Marine Regiment. "We can't get our word out. They don't believe what we say."

...

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