COMMAND POST - The Black Holes of Fallujah
By Alan Brain on Fallujah
From the AFP via The Australian : US marines uncovered an underground prison in Fallujah today containing at least two bodies and two emaciated brothers who were still alive, an intelligence officer, who refused to be identified, said.The prison was discovered in a house in the Jolan neighbourhood, considered the insurgent nerve centre in the city. Marines were clearing the building after it was shelled by the US military when they were alerted by screaming.
At the back of the house, one of many they were shooting at with hundreds of rounds or firing at with mortars, the troops opened a door and found a barred prison with three cells below. An AFP reporter who entered the house saw two corpses covered in ash, and two men, who were apparently mentally handicapped and had yelled themselves hoarse, were led from the building by marines. Inside, one of the bodies was riddled with bullet holes and had clearly been executed. The other may have been that of a man who died in shelling by US-led forces, the officer said. “It looks like an execution chamber or something,” one marine said....
30 Days of Mopping Up Expected
By Alan Brain on Fallujah
From the Times via The Australian : Captain Chaos. Convicted Killer. Casa de Meurte.With their names stencilled on their cannons, the tanks of the Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry — the regiment that General George Armstrong Custer led to annihilation at Little Big Horn — were spearheading the charge into guerilla territory in Fallujah yesterday for what the US forces hope will be the last stand of Iraqi resistance. The area into which they were rolling is Hai al-Shuhada, or Martyrs’ District. The name is symbolic: the city’s Iraqi and foreign fighters are determined to battle to the death, to become martyrs on the last day of the holy month of Ramadan. The US soldiers are intent on subduing the rebel city within days, killing every fighter they can find, and then going home. “We just want to get this over with in a few days, get in there and give it to them,” said Staff Sergeant Coy Embry, 24, from Oklahoma. “By now anybody who’s left, you know they’re bad, they gotta be.”
[…] US forces were confident they could meet a 72-hour deadline to break the insurgents in the southern districts, a victory that commanders expect to open the way to a 30-day mopping-up operation in the city, searching for any rebels still holding out. “They have some rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s, but all that does is piss us off,” said Sergeant Embry, head of a crew of cavalry “dismount” soldiers riding into battle in the back of a heavily armoured vehicle. Several US vehicles have been hit by rockets that struck their armour plating, but so far without disabling the massive machines.... |
