IRAQ WAR - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
Fallujah Under Threat Yet Again |
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by Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily Inter Press Service Entered into the database on Monday, September 11th, 2006 @ 12:34:45 MST |
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After enduring two major assaults, Fallujah is under threat from U.S.
forces again, residents say. "They destroyed our city twice and they are threatening us a third time,"
52-year-old Ahmed Dhahy told IPS in Fallujah, the Sunni-dominated city 50km
west of Baghdad. "They want us to do their job for them and turn in those who target them,"
he said. Dhahy, who lost 32 relatives when his father's house was bombed by a U.S. aircraft
during the April 2004 attack on the city, said the U.S. military had threatened
it would destroy the city if resistance fighters were not handed over to them.
"Last week the Americans used loudspeakers on the backs of their tanks
and Humvees to threaten us," Dhahy said. Residents said the U.S. forces
warned of a "large military operation" if fighters were not handed
over. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said he had no reports of such action.
Fallujah was heavily bombed in April 2004 and again in November that year.
The attacks destroyed 75 percent of city infrastructure and left more than 5,000
dead, according to local non-governmental groups. But following the heavy assaults, resistance fighters have continued to launch
attacks against U.S. and official Iraqi forces in the city. Fallujah remains
under tight security, with the U.S. military using biometric identification,
full body searches and bar-coded ID's for residents to enter and leave their
city. "The Iraqi resistance has not stopped for a single day despite the huge
U.S. army activities," a city police captain speaking on condition of anonymity
told IPS. "The wise men of the city explained to U.S. officials that it is impossible
to stop the resistance by military operations, but it seems the Americans prefer
to do it the hard way." The police captain said anti-occupation fighters had increased their activities
in the face of sectarian violence in which Shia death squads have killed thousands
of Sunnis in Baghdad. Many residents of Fallujah have relatives in the capital
city. Lack of reconstruction, and the U.S. military's failure to pay due compensation
to victims' families have added to the unrest, the captain said. "There used to be resistance attacks against the U.S. and Iraqi forces
in Fallujah daily," added the captain. "But now they have increased
to several per day. Many soldiers have been killed and their vehicles destroyed.
So it is clear that the security measures they have taken in Fallujah have failed."
Several residents told IPS that all sorts of killings have been taking place
over the past eight months. Religious leaders have been targeted regularly,
with no group claiming responsibility. On Sunday Sep. 10, former chief of traffic police Brigadier Ahmed Diraa was
shot dead in his car. Residents in Fallujah told IPS that Diraa had quit his
post a month earlier. In the face of killings, and now threats of a new attack, residents remain
defiant of the occupation forces. The hardships that people have endured seem
to have strengthened rather than weakened them. "There are so many arrests and killings, and collective punishments such
as random shootings, violent inspection raids, repeated curfews and deliberate
cutting of water and electricity," Mohammed al-Darraji, head of an Iraqi
human rights group in Fallujah called The Iraqi Centre for Human Rights Observation
told IPS. "What is going on in this city requires international intervention to
protect civilians and to punish those who seriously damaged Fallujah society
and committed serious crimes against humanity," al-Darraji added. His group
has been monitoring breaches of the Geneva Conventions in the city since the
April 2004 siege. "There is a long list of collective punishments that have turned the city
into a frightful detention camp," he said. Another human rights campaigner in Fallujah who asked to be referred to as
Khalid said human rights activists in Iraq felt betrayed by the United Nations.
The UN had played ignorant "by leaving U.S. troops to act alone in the
city," Khalid, who works with Raya Human Rights, a non-governmental organisation
in the city told IPS. "This was after the media exposed the enormity of
the violence and human rights violations during the last three years. _______________________ Read from Looking Glass News U.S.
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