- (Note - You can hear Jeff's 2-hour December 2nd interview
with Dhar in the RenseRadio.com Archives)
-
- *Journalists and residents who have fled Fallujah share
accounts of US troops killing unarmed and wounded people. Dahr Jamail
continues interviewing survivors as images of a city under US assault further
emerge.*
-
- BAGHDAD - Men now seeking
refuge in the Baghdad area are telling horrific stories of indiscriminate
killings by US forces during the peak of fighting last month in the largely
annihilated city of Fallujah.
-
- In an interview with The NewStandard, Burhan Fasa'a,
an Iraqi journalist who works for the popular Lebanese satellite TV station,
LBC, said he witnessed US crimes up close. Burhan Fasa'a, who was in Fallujah
for nine days during the most intense combat, said Americans grew easily
frustrated with Iraqis who could not speak English.
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- "Americans did not have interpreters with them,"
Fasa'a said, "so they entered houses and killed people because they
didn't speak English. They entered the house where I was with 26 people,
and [they] shot people because [the people] didn't obey [the soldiers']
orders, even just because the people couldn't understand a word of English."
-
- A man named Khalil, who asked The NewStandard not to
use his last name for fear of reprisals, said he had witnessed the shooting
of civilians who were waving white flags while they tried to escape the
city.
- Fasa'a further speculated, "Soldiers thought the
people were rejecting their orders, so they shot them. But the people just
couldn't understand them."
-
- Fasa'a says American troops detained him. They interrogated
him specifically about working for the Arab media, he said, and held him
for three days. Fasa'a and other prisoners slept on the ground with no
blankets. He said prisoners were made to go to the bathroom in handcuffs,
using one toilet in the middle of the camp.
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- "During the nine days I was in Fallujah, all of
the wounded women, kids and old people, none of them were evacuated,"
Fasa'a said. "They either suffered to death, or somehow survived."
-
- Many refugees tell stories of having witnessed US troops
killing already injured people, including former fighters and noncombatants
alike.
-
- "I watched them roll over wounded people in the
street with tanks," said Kassem Mohammed Ahmed, a resident of Fallujah.
"This happened so many times."
-
- Other refugees recount similar stories. "I saw so
many civilians killed there, and I
-
- saw several tanks roll over the wounded in the streets,"
said Aziz Abdulla, 27 years old, who fled the fighting last month. Another
resident, Abu Aziz, said he also witnessed American armored vehicles crushing
people he believes were alive.
-
- Abdul Razaq Ismail, another resident who fled Fallujah,
said: "I saw dead bodies on the ground and nobody could bury them
because of the American snipers. The Americans were dropping some of the
bodies into the Euphrates near Fallujah."
-
- A man called Abu Hammad said he witnessed US troops throwing
Iraqi bodies into the Euphrates River. Others nodded in agreement. Abu
Hammed and others also said they saw Americans shooting unarmed Iraqis
who waved white flags.
-
- Believing that American and Iraqi forces were bent on
killing anyone who stayed in Fallujah, Hammad said he watched people attempt
to swim across the Euphrates to escape the siege. "Even then the Americans
shot them with rifles from the shore," he said. "Even if some
of them were holding a white flag or white clothes over their heads to
show they are not fighters, they were all shot."
-
- Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein reported
witnessing similar events. After running out of basic necessities and deciding
to flee the city at the height of the US-led assault, Hussein ran to the
Euphrates.
-
- "I decided to swim," Hussein told colleagues
at the AP, who wrote up the photographer's harrowing story, "but I
changed my mind after seeing US helicopters firing on and killing people
who tried to cross the river."
-
-
- Hussein said he saw soldiers kill a family of five as
they tried to traverse the Euphrates, before he buried a man by the riverbank
with his bare hands.
-
-
- "I kept walking along the river for two hours and
I could still see some US snipers ready to shoot anyone who might swim,"
Hussein recounted. "I quit the idea of crossing the river and walked
for about five hours through orchards."
-
- A man named Khalil, who asked The NewStandard not to
use his last name for fear of reprisals, said he had witnessed the shooting
of civilians who were waving white flags while they tried to escape the
city. "They shot women and old men in the streets," he said.
"Then they shot anyone who tried to get their bodies."
-
- "There are bodies the Americans threw in the river,"
Khalil continued, noting that he personally witnessed US troops using the
Euphrates to dispose of Iraqi dead. "And anyone who stayed thought
they would be killed by the Americans, so they tried to swim across the
river. Even people who couldn't swim tried to cross the river. They drowned
rather than staying to be killed by the Americans," said Khalil.
-
- US military commanders reported at least two incidents
during which they say Iraqi resistance fighters used white flags to lure
Marines into dangerous situations, including a well-orchestrated ambush.
-
- Proponents of relaxed rules of engagement for US troops
engaged in "counter-insurgency" warfare have cited such incidents
from last month's experience in Fallujah as arguments for more permissive
combat regulations. Some have said US forces should establish what used
to be called "free-fire zones," wherein any human being encountered
is assumed to be hostile, and thus a legitimate target, relieving American
infantrymen of their obligation to distinguish and protect civilians. But
if the stories Fallujan witnesses have shared with TNS are accurate, it
appears the policy might have preceded the argument in this case.
-
- US and Iraqi officials have called the "pacification"
of Fallujah a success and said that the action was necessary to stabilize
Iraq in preparation for the country's planned "transition to democracy."
The military continues to deny US-led forces killed significant numbers
of civilians during November's nearly constant fighting and bombardment.
-
- © 2004 The NewStandard. See our reprint policy.
- www.newstandardnews.net
-
-
-
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- (c)2004 Dahr Jamail.
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