AT WHAT POINT IS THIS CALLED A "MASSACRE"?
US has killed 280 in Fallujah this week, says hospital doctor
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
09 April 2004
American marines besieging Fallujah, west of Baghdad, have killed 280 Iraqis and wounded more than 400 in fighting this week, the doctor at the city's hospital said yesterday.
The city of 300,000 people on the Euphrates has been under attack from ground and air since the beginning of the week, during which it has been sealed off from the outside world.
The number of dead and wounded is likely to be higher said Dr Taher al-Issawi at the small local hospital. "We also know of dead and wounded ... buried under the rubble but we cannot reach them because of the fighting," he said.
The battle for Fallujah is already transforming politics in Iraq with a swelling of nationalist support, particularly strong among Sunni Arabs, for the insurgents in the city. "Before this week many Iraqis thought that people in Fallujah had their own private battle with the US but now we see them as a symbol of the whole country," said one Iraqi observer.
A sign of the sympathy felt for Fallujah was the crowds of people gathering outside the main blood bank in Baghdad yesterday. It was a symbolic gesture since marines are not allowing ambulances in or out of the city.
"It is barbaric what is happening at Fallujah," said Abdul Rahman Khalil, an engineer working in the oil industry after he had given blood. "The Americans don't see the difference between resistance and ordinary people." Tariq Hamoudi, another engineer, said: "We work for a company specialising in heavy equipment for the oil refining sector and both Shia and Sunni feel the same in our company. We are supporting Fallujah. It is not acceptable what the Americans are doing."
A banner on the front of a bus outside the blood bank read: "We are giving our blood from Mahmudiyah to our brothers in Fallujah." Mahmudiyah is a mixed Shia-Sunni Arab town 25 miles south of Baghdad.
The siege of Fallujah may mark the moment, disastrous for the Allies, when the guerrillas won mass support from the Sunni Arabs and sympathy from the Shias. Iraqi nationalism, its slogans so long devalued by Saddam Hussein, is beginning to look like a potent force again. Even in Sunni districts of Baghdad like Adhamiyah there are slogans on walls supporting the radical Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr simply because he is against the US occupation.
Many Iraqis say the Americans are killing people who have done nothing in an act of collective punishment for the death of the four US civilians killed and mutilated in Fallujah last week. Hashim al-Jenabi said: "They talk about terrorism against the twin towers in the US, but why is it not terrorism when American planes hit a mosque and kill 40 people."
The US military said last night it had suffered six more combat deaths, five in action on Wednesday and Thursday and a sixth who died from injuries sustained in a bomb attack in Mosul on Sunday.
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