Iraq – Fallujah’s Residents Starving, Murdered, Besieged by US Backed Government Forces and ISIS.

Nicholas J. Davies, author of  “Blood on our Hands – the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq”, has written: “The Fallujah Compensation Committee reported in March 2005 that the assault destroyed 36,000 homes, 9,000 shops, 65 mosques, 60 schools, both train stations, one of the two bridges, two power stations, three water treatment plants and the city’s entire sanitation and telephone systems.”

Now, Human Rights Watch has written a Report (2) indicating that near unbelievably, twelve years on, all has deteriorated to the extent that: “Residents of the besieged city of Fallujah are starving. Iraqi government forces should urgently allow aid to enter the city, and the extremist group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, which captured the city in early 2014, should allow civilians to leave.”

Marine battery blasting Fallujah targets with M-198 155mm Howitzer gun . The US used many types of DU (depleted Uranium) projectiles.

Fallujah is now under siege by the US imposed Iraqi puppet government and ISIS – as people demonstrate in thousands in protest at yet another American backed administration which has brought nothing but misery to the population. Incredibly US Vice President Joe Biden and Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani have come together: “to make clear … that no attempt should be made to unseat” the current Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi. (“US, Iran Keep Iraqi PM in Place”, Reuters, 6^th April 2016.)

“The people of Fallujah are besieged by the government, trapped by ISIS, and are starving”, states HRW Deputy Middle East Director, Joe Stork.

“Since government forces recaptured nearby Ramadi, the capital of Anbar governorate, in late December 2015, and the al-Jazira desert area north of Fallujah in March 2016, they have cut off supply routes into the city, three Iraqi officials said. Tens of thousands of civilians from an original population of more than 300,000 remain inside the city.”

HRW obtained a list of one hundred and forty people, including young children, said to have died in the last few months “from lack of food and medicine.” The names have been withheld for fear that ISIS, which forbids the population making contact outside the city “would punish the relatives of the dead.”

Residents are reported to be eating bread made from flour from ground date stones and soup made from grass. Food still available is sold at staggering prices. “A 50-kilogram sack of flour goes for US$750, and a bag of sugar for $500.” In Baghdad, just seventy kilometres away: “ the same amount of flour costs $15 and of sugar $40 … each day starving children arrive at the local hospital … most foodstuffs are no longer available at any price … the hospital has run out of baby food.”

The World Food Programme has stated weakly that it is “concerned” about the food situation. In the annals of shamefully pathetic UN responses to tragedies of enormity this may be this 2016’s winner.

Sources told HRW that both Iraqi government troops and the Popular Mobilization Force, one of about forty militia forces under the Ministry of the Interior are preventing food and essential goods from reaching the city.

Those trying to leave the city are in danger of being murdered by ISIS. On 22^nd March, one man who went to one of their checkpoints saying he had to leave, he could not take the situation any longer, was taken back into the city and executed.

SIDEBAR

The curse of Fallujah: Women warned not to have babies because of rise in birth defects since U.S. assault
DESPITE THEIR COMPLICITY, THE BRITISH MEDIA HAS PAID MUCH MORE ATTENTION TO THESE TRAGEDIES THAN THEIR COUNTERPARTS IN AMERICA. 

By MAIL FOREIGN SERVICE | The Daily Mail (UK)
UPDATED: 10:21 EST, 5 March 2010

The US assault has created a rising wave of horrible birth defects in the city. Click here to read more.

[dropcap]A[/dropcap] high number of children are being born with birth defects in an Iraqi city where U.S. forces may have used chemical weapons during a fierce battle in 2004. Children in Fallujah are being born with limb, head, heart and nervous system defects. There is even a claim that a baby was born with three heads. The number of heart defects among newborn babies is said to be 13 times higher than the rate in Europe.

Birth defects: A Fallujah mother holds her little girl, who was born without a left forearm and hand

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The city, 40 miles west of Baghdad, was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the Iraq war in late 2004. U.S. Marines led Operation Phantom Fury to recapture it from  insurgents. British troops were involved in manning checkpoints on the outskirts of the city as the Americans went in. The U.S. has admitted that it used white phosphorus in the attack, but only as an illumination device. Under international law it is illegal if used as an offensive weapon. America has never given a clear response to claims it also used depleted uranium weapons against the insurgents, such as ‘bunkerbuster’ bombs. Both types of weapons can contaminate crops and water supplies. The BBC’s John Simpson reported on Thursday from Fallujah that, while there had been no authoritative medical investigation, there was growing evidence of an alarming incidence of birth defects.

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BELOW: Curse of Fallujah: This little girl was born with deformed feet Collateral damage? NEXT: Another Fallujah youngster born with six fingers on one hand.

Doctors in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are reporting a high level of birth defects, with some blaming weapons used by the US after the Iraq invasion.
Daily Mail picture desk, MUST CREDIT BBC

‘We went to a clinic for the disabled, and were given details of dozens upon dozens of cases of children with serious birth defects,’ he said. ‘One photograph I saw showed a newborn baby with three heads.’ He said that while he was at a U.S.-funded hospital in the city, a stream of parents arrived with children who had limb defects, spinal conditions and other problems.

BELOW. Mystery: An infant born with just one eye battling to stay alive in the Fallujah clinic.

SHELLS WITH A RADIOACTIVE PUNCH

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[dropcap]R[/dropcap]adiation experts claim the birth defects have been caused by uranium. Depleted uranium, or spent nuclear fuel, is twice as dense as lead, making it an effective material for armour-piercing shells and bullets. On hitting a tank or bunker, they disintegrate, with up to 40 per cent of the uranium, which is still radioactive, turning into fine powder. Roger Coghill, a Government adviser on the health risks of radiation who has research labs in Gwent, said: ‘The particles are so small that they don’t fall back to earth, they  hang around in the atmosphere and are still very deadly years after the conflict.’

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The dust particles are not only poisonous, they can enter the bloodstream and become lodged in the lymph glands from where they emit radiation that could cause cancer. Chris Busby, an Ulster University expert in the effects of radiation, said the uranium particles can also wreck the DNA of sperm and eggs produced by contaminated adults – causing a multitude of birth defects in any baby they conceive. Professor Busby, who is also co-founder of environmental consultancy Green Audit, said: ‘White phosphorus is not something that specifically damages the DNA. ‘But depleted uranium, normal uranium and enriched uranium are all mutagens and cause birth defects at quite small concentrations.

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A British-based Iraq researcher, Malik Hamdan, told the BBC that Fallujah doctors were swamped by a ‘massive, unprecedented’ number of heart defects and other problems. Figures from a city doctor from 2003, before the war, showed she was dealing with one birth defect every two months at that time, but was now seeing at least one case a day. Miss Hamdan said data from this January showed the rate of heart defects among newborns was 95 per 1,000 births – 13 times that of Europe Simpson said that the worst problems appeared to be in a part of the city which was at the heart of the resistance to the Allies.

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The Americans said they took public health concerns ‘very seriously’. A U.S. military spokesman added: ‘No studies to date have indicated environmental issues resulting in specific health issues.’ Fallujah became infamous after the burned corpses of four U.S. contractors were dragged through the streets in March 2004. Rebel leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had gathered up to 5,000 rebels there. It was encircled by U.S. forces, along with the Black Watch Regiment, to ensure no rebels escaped. However, civilians were encouraged to leave and up to 90 per cent of the 300,000 population did so. The attack began late on November 7 and by November 16, U.S. officials announced that Fallujah had been cleared. The battle cost America 51 dead but up to 1,400 gunmen were killed.   Enlarge   A soldier from the U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division leaps through an opening in a broken wall while clearing abandoned buildings of insurgent fighters in Fallujah in 2004

SIDEBAR SOURCE: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255312/Birth-defects-Fallujah-rise-U-S-operation.html#ixzz45GzHMYgG 
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Rebels putting up some resistance to the US assault. Many would later move on to join ISIS and other extremist groups. (November 8, 2004)

In late February a family trying to leave were also killed. On 30^th March it was reported that thirty five people trying to leave had also been executed.

Moreover: “Government aircraft and artillery have carried out numerous attacks, which Fallujah residents say have killed many civilians.”

Aircraft and artillery supplied by the US.

“Neighbors reported to one former resident that on November 27, 2015, bombings killed 12 people in his neighborhood, including nine children.

“On August 13 (2015) aerial bombs struck Fallujah’s children’s hospital, killing several people … A medical source in the city, whose information Human Rights Watch could not confirm, said that since January 2014, 5,769 combatants and civilians have been injured and 3,455 killed, roughly one-fourth of them women and children.”

It seems it is Iraq’s plight to be starved and bombed as a result of US-UK policies. Thirteen years of the most draconian embargo ever administered by the UN, driven by the US and UK, with the UK heading the Sanctions Committee, the 1991 bombing, twelve subsequent years also of illegal US-UK bombing. Under Saddam there was a rationing system, ironically, commended by the UN for its efficiency – although hugely restricted by the UN for lack of imports. Since “liberation” Fallujah is another symbol of the sheer Western driven wickedness and iniquity that has befallen Iraq since 2003.

Perhaps it is time Tony Blair – whose officials authored the dodgy dossiers that gave the excuse for the illegal invasion – lived up to the farcical Global Legacy Award presented to him by Save the Children in November 2014 and pitched up in Fallujah with desperately needed aid from his £multi-million charity and from his own £multi million pocket. It would be trivial amends, but it would be a start.

Perhaps Save the Children could also atone for awarding a man who many eminent legal minds argue should be accounting for himself at the International Criminal Court in The Hague by doing the same.

I feel a petition coming on.

1. http://www.globalresearch.ca/fallujah-us-marines-further-allegations-of-war-crimes-surface/5366163
2. https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/04/07/iraq-fallujah-siege-starving-population

About the author

Senior Contributing Editor FELICITY ARBUTHNOT is an internationally respected expert in Middle East affairs. She has visited Iraq dozens of times.