Feed them mushrooms: the reporting failure from Fallujah
"Even for a hardened cynic like me, the brazen enormity of Fallujah as a successfully spun and covered-up massive US atrocity against what was 16 days ago a dissident but functioning civilian city of 300,000 people - the "city of mosques" takes my breath away." -Tony Kevin.
The Australian of Nov 24 savages former diplomat and SIEV X researcher Tony Kevin, through its 'infamous' mouthpiece Jane Albrechtsen, in "Knee-jerk judgments". Then, the next day, The Australian conveniently "chopped up" Kevin's rebuttal of Jane Albrechtsen's scathing attack on him.
Here's what Albrechtsen wrote:
More grotesque is the claim by former diplomat and academic Tony Kevin in The Sydney Morning Herald on the day the battle began that this US-led attack was a war crime -- and for having soldiers in Iraq, Australia was morally complicit in these war crimes. "This will be no neat, surgical strike," Kevin wrote. "To get the measure of this, think of the Warsaw rising in 1944, or the Russian army's destruction of the Chechen capital, Grozny."
To compare coalition and Iraqi forces trying to restore law and order in Fallujah before January's democratic elections with the barbarous actions of Nazis in Warsaw in 1944 is morally offensive and intellectually bankrupt. To get a measure of Warsaw, as Kevin beseeches us, consider that Heinrich Himmler's orders to the Nazis talked of "every inhabitant to be killed", "no prisoners to be taken" and "every single house to be blown up and burned".
The Australian - Jane Albrechtsen, "Knee-jerk judgments"
Tony Kevin writes, after sending me two highly significant and not-so embedded news articles from Xinhua, a Chinese News service:
"I think both stories are important correctives to the false impression of Fallujah that the mainstream media are now giving us. Thank goodness for Xinhua which has no axe to grind in this affair."
"The facts that US says now that reconstruction cannot start till February (after the election!), and that the few Red Cross aid convoys being allowed in by US forces are being told to leave the city before night falls, adds credence to a view that real fighting is still continuing in the ruined city - just as it has done for years in Grozny, Chechnya."
"I suspect the US, having now made its punitive point by razing the city and making a quarter of a million people homeless, has no appetite for more US military casualties by trying to subdue what is left. They will leave much of the ruined city as a no-go area controlled by the resistance."
"This status quo suits the US well enough, as long as it is not exposed in too much uncensored reporting such as the rare Xinhua examples [below]. The US will claim it is the Resistance's fault that the US is unable to commence rebuilding the city. Meanwhile, the US military propaganda machine is able to invent and spin fairytales about finding torture chambers etc, with no-one to contradict them."
"Even for a hardened cynic like me, the brazen enormity of Fallujah as a successfully spun and covered-up massive US atrocity against what was 16 days ago a dissident but functioning civilian city of 300,000 people - the "city of mosques" takes my breath away. It is the Western mainstream media's worst reporting failure in the whole Iraq War - it is as if the media have just given up. As modern atrocities go, it does not get any bigger or worse than this, unless the US Army now does the same thig to Mosul - a city of 1 million people. I guess having done it to Fallujah, why stop there?"
"Janet Albrechtsen savages me in the Australian today ("Kneejerk judgements") for comparing it to the Nazi suppression of the Warsaw rising in 1944. I think she actually helps me to make my case, by getting a few more people thinking about the real issues here."
Tony Kevin, letter
24 November 2004
Tony Kevin
Canberra
25 November 2004
The following facts are put on public record.
A letter from me was published in The Australian today, 25 November 2004:
I requested a right of reply in the form of an opinion piece. Instead, the Opinion Page Editor offered me a letter which, he wrote, "We'll be sure to run it asap. You can send me the letter and I'll organise everything from then on".
There was no length limit stipulated in the Opinion Page Editor's letter to me. I wrote concisely, but expecting that in the circumstances of my protest at Albrechtsen's article, room would be found for a 350-word letter, as my response to an article I believed seriously defamatory of my public reputation.
The letter as published above was cut to 150 words - The Australian's normal requested length limit. My letter was published last in a selection of seven - the first two were "pro" - Albrechtsen, the next five "anti". There is no indication to readers that I was replying as a person named prominently and negatively by Albrechtsen, and who believed he had been defamed by her article and was seeking a public right of reply. Following my letter appears a 300-word letter from an academic on labor market flexibility - length constraints do not appear to have been a problem in the case of that letter.
So it appears that I have again been treated with manifest contempt by The Australian's editorial management. And I have, once again, been misled by management reassurance from this powerful organisation that it would respond fairly to my protest.
The lesson is that high-profile staff commentators like Albrechtsen can use defamatory public language about people who express dissident views on major public issues like Australia's involvement in criminal military actions in Iraq, and those people have no proper right of reply in the pages of The Australian.
If any lawyers practicing in the defamation field and reading this and the Albrechtsen article think I may have a sound case for defamation against Janet Albrechtsen and The Australian, I would be glad to hear from them. I could not begin to fund such a case myself - it would have to be on the basis of "if we win, I pay my lawyers". Any surplus after costs and fees would go to a non-US embedded relief fund for Iraqi victims of Fallujah.
What is far more important than my public reputation is that in its excisions, The Australian took out of my letter the very sentences that gave it credibility and strength: the judgements of senior US media columnists Jonathan Schell, Jim Hoagland and Mark Bowden that the real purpose of the US destruction of Fallujah was exemplary collective punishment of a city that had sheltered insurgents; the concerns of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour and the International Red Cross that the US attack on Fallujah had involved war crimes; the admission of Defence Minister Robert Hill that Australian defence force personnel seconded to US forces had probably been involved in the planning and execution of the US attack on Fallujah; and the references to un-embedded news reporting sources Xinhua and Al Jazeeera.
And this sentence:
"The indiscriminate and disproportionate use of weapons of mass destruction (cluster bombs, flesh-melting phosphorus weapons, 2000 kg blockbuster bombs) in a civilian-inhabited city, of itself defines Fallujah as a war crime under the Geneva Conventions."
Without all this, my letter was left simply as the unsupported expression of one person's opinion.
Clearly, those facts were too disturbing to be allowed to reach readers of The Australian, even in a compressed 350 word letter, from a person whose considered judgement that Fallujah was a US war crime had been personally attacked by one of The Australian?s stable of right-wing correspondents as "grotesque", "morally offensive and intellectually bankrupt", "unconcerned with facts and blinded by political motivations" and "hysterical".
In this way, The Australian had proved my point - that our mainstream media, by not passing on to the Australian public more than a small sanitised fraction of what is coming in on international news wires, are shielding us from knowing the full horror of the US destruction of Fallujah and Australia?s participation in this war crime. And The Australian has shown the lengths to which it will go to try to discredit and silence the public voice of anyone who dares to say that two and two make four.
Tony Kevin
Canberra
25 November 2004
For further information on this media release:
Tony Kevin [phone numbers posted]
Letter from Tony Kevin as submitted to the Australian, 24 November: 2004
Xinhua News
Twelve days after losing contact with a correspondent based in Fallujah, Xinhua reporters were relieved to see him report back for work in deplorable shape on Saturday.
Abdul Rahman, a 30-year-old Fallujah resident working for Xinhua, made a phone call to the Xinhua office in Baghdad with his Iraqna mobile on Nov. 9, which became the last message Xinhua received from him.
He reported on that day that Fallujah had been ripped into two parts controlled by US-Iraqi forces and fighters respectively.
With his words still resonating, Xinhua reporters were happy to see Rahman safe and sound.
Relaxing on a sofa for the first time after 10 days in hell, Rahman calmed down and recounted his experience as a correspondent and eyewitness of the bloody fighting in the past two weeks, as well as his tale of escaping alive.
"I could either escape for life or stay to cover the truth. I chose the latter," he said.
"At the beginning, the resistance in the Jolan district was strong and the American troops backed up. After rounds of air bombings, the area became relatively silent and the Americans pushed into the city with limited resistance," he recalled.
Rahman could not confirm if the US forces used any chemical weapons as some newspapers claimed.
But he told Xinhua that some doctors in Fallujah were shocked to see that many bodies were charred without apparent injuries.
With fierce clashes on the ground and bombardment by US aircraft, many houses were leveled or people were killed.
"My friend and I heard the groaning of some injured people under ruins of some destroyed houses, but we could do nothing for them."
He was the witness of a scene where six injured Iraqis dragged by several US soldiers to a street were rolled over by a tank.
He also saw an Iraqi cameraman gunned down by a sniper while shooting in face of US vehicles.
"I don't know how long it will take me to get over this," said Rahman, still reeling from what he saw.
During the hardest period, helpless Rahman ran and crawled around, looking for shelters and food.
In the last days, Rahman was pushed to the Shuhada district, where US Marines said they trapped most insurgents and geared up for a duel.
Weighing the dangerous situation, Rahman decided to leave the city with the help of a friend whose shop was destroyed in the US raids.
"I thought Abdul Rahman was killed before he came to my house a week ago and asked me to escape with him," said Qahtan Mohamed Jawad, an agricultural engineer.
"We stayed together, ran in Baghdad and there and looked for food and drinks," said the Samaritan.
Rahman said in the city he had ever met a woman whose husband and two sons were shot dead in front of her eyes when the family went to US soldiers to turn themselves in.
Hearing her story, Rahman decided not to go to a mosque in the north which US forces said receives civilians.
The duo also avoided the routes in the west, where helicopters and snipers were taking full positions.
"South is the only chance," he said, "but the roads were full of dangers and we had to crawl with bare hands in darkness and hide in houses in daytime for fear of being shot by American snipers."
"We had only one bottle of water and drank little each time. As for food, we only had dates," said Rahman.
"On the way, we saw groups of insurgents and some spotted us. They let us go after we told them we were reporters," he said.
For consecutive nights, Rahman and Jawad crawled on unpaved roads and rough fields for about 3 kms before they reached the Euphrates river and were ferried to the southwest bank.
On Nov. 19, they were saved by the hospitable locals in the rural area and driven to makeshift refugee camps outside Fallujah.
In Amriahat, a small town near Fallujah, Rahman was reunited with his brothers who were Islamic humanitarian workers and other family members who fled the city ahead of the massive offensive.
"The moment when we reached the other side of the Euphrates, I realized that we were safe," recalled Rahman, whose left arm was wrapped with gauze, a reminder of the arduous journey.
The US-Iraqi forces mounted the major attack against Fallujah on Nov. 8 to retake the city from fighters loyal to Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as they claimed.
A senior US commander said last Thursday that about 1,200 insurgents had been killed in the all-out assault, and 1,025 prisoners were held.
Neither the Iraqi government nor the US military released any figure about civilian casualties.
Link to the English Eastday article
2004-11-22 00:07:56
NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Militant groups in battle-torn Fallujah have controlled 60 percent of the central Iraqi city and surrounded dozens of US Marines in Jolan district, witnesses said Sunday.
"Defenders of the city are controlling 60 percent of the city and they are encircling dozens of US soldiers in Jolan neighborhood," eyewitnesses who managed to sneak out of the city told Xinhua.
Residents of Fallujah said the southern part of Fallujah, which is still under control of the militant groups, constitutes the larger part of the city, and US troops only control the north and small eastern spots in the city.
"Some American troops are based in government buildings and they are pounded by fighters," they said.
"In daytime, groups of mujahedeen (Holy War fighters) engage with hit-and-run attacks with US Marines, and at the same time they gear themselves up for the night battles," they said. Fierce fighting and loud explosions resonated throughout Jolan district before the sunset.
US troops continued pounding the area as plumes and columns ofsmoke covered the sky over Jolan and the southern al-Shuhadaa district.
Early this month, US and Iraqi forces launched a major offensiveto crush insurgents, including Zarqawi group, in Fallujah, 50 km west of Baghdad.
About one week later, the US military claimed it had controlled the city.
Enditem
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-11/22/content_2244288.htm
The Australian of Nov 24 savages former diplomat and SIEV X researcher Tony Kevin, through its 'infamous' mouthpiece Jane Albrechtsen, in "Knee-jerk judgments". Then, the next day, The Australian conveniently "chopped up" Kevin's rebuttal of Jane Albrechtsen's scathing attack on him.
Here's what Albrechtsen wrote:
More grotesque is the claim by former diplomat and academic Tony Kevin in The Sydney Morning Herald on the day the battle began that this US-led attack was a war crime -- and for having soldiers in Iraq, Australia was morally complicit in these war crimes. "This will be no neat, surgical strike," Kevin wrote. "To get the measure of this, think of the Warsaw rising in 1944, or the Russian army's destruction of the Chechen capital, Grozny."
To compare coalition and Iraqi forces trying to restore law and order in Fallujah before January's democratic elections with the barbarous actions of Nazis in Warsaw in 1944 is morally offensive and intellectually bankrupt. To get a measure of Warsaw, as Kevin beseeches us, consider that Heinrich Himmler's orders to the Nazis talked of "every inhabitant to be killed", "no prisoners to be taken" and "every single house to be blown up and burned".
The Australian - Jane Albrechtsen, "Knee-jerk judgments"
Tony Kevin writes, after sending me two highly significant and not-so embedded news articles from Xinhua, a Chinese News service:
"I think both stories are important correctives to the false impression of Fallujah that the mainstream media are now giving us. Thank goodness for Xinhua which has no axe to grind in this affair."
"The facts that US says now that reconstruction cannot start till February (after the election!), and that the few Red Cross aid convoys being allowed in by US forces are being told to leave the city before night falls, adds credence to a view that real fighting is still continuing in the ruined city - just as it has done for years in Grozny, Chechnya."
"I suspect the US, having now made its punitive point by razing the city and making a quarter of a million people homeless, has no appetite for more US military casualties by trying to subdue what is left. They will leave much of the ruined city as a no-go area controlled by the resistance."
"This status quo suits the US well enough, as long as it is not exposed in too much uncensored reporting such as the rare Xinhua examples [below]. The US will claim it is the Resistance's fault that the US is unable to commence rebuilding the city. Meanwhile, the US military propaganda machine is able to invent and spin fairytales about finding torture chambers etc, with no-one to contradict them."
"Even for a hardened cynic like me, the brazen enormity of Fallujah as a successfully spun and covered-up massive US atrocity against what was 16 days ago a dissident but functioning civilian city of 300,000 people - the "city of mosques" takes my breath away. It is the Western mainstream media's worst reporting failure in the whole Iraq War - it is as if the media have just given up. As modern atrocities go, it does not get any bigger or worse than this, unless the US Army now does the same thig to Mosul - a city of 1 million people. I guess having done it to Fallujah, why stop there?"
"Janet Albrechtsen savages me in the Australian today ("Kneejerk judgements") for comparing it to the Nazi suppression of the Warsaw rising in 1944. I think she actually helps me to make my case, by getting a few more people thinking about the real issues here."
Tony Kevin, letter
24 November 2004
Fallujah and The Australian - another shameful day for a once great Australian newspaper
Media ReleaseTony Kevin
Canberra
25 November 2004
The following facts are put on public record.
A letter from me was published in The Australian today, 25 November 2004:
Fallujah was punishedBelow for comparison is my 350-word letter as submitted, after I had complained in writing to the Opinion Page Editor of the Australian that Janet Albrechtsen?s opinion page piece on 24 November, 2004, "Knee-jerk judgements", had misrepresented my views, defamed my judgement, and publicly attacked my professional reputation as a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, Canberra.
THE US destruction of Fallujah was Nazi-style collective punishment. US troops calmly destroyed this city of 300,000 people, that posed no military threat to the US-supported Allawi regime, as a warning to other Iraqis of the heavy price they will pay for politically defying the US-protected regime and for sheltering insurgent fighters.
There are horrifying incidents as reported by independent non-US embedded journalists of hospitals forced to close and patients pushed from their beds into the streets; of unarmed men shot in cold blood while seeking safe passage out of the city with their wives and children under white flag; of injured people pulled out of buildings into the street and then run over by tanks; of photographers shot down as they filmed battle; of people shot as they tried to swim rivers to safety. Albrechtsen should read Google and begin to absorb the facts on Fallujah.
Tony Kevin, Forrest, ACT
I requested a right of reply in the form of an opinion piece. Instead, the Opinion Page Editor offered me a letter which, he wrote, "We'll be sure to run it asap. You can send me the letter and I'll organise everything from then on".
There was no length limit stipulated in the Opinion Page Editor's letter to me. I wrote concisely, but expecting that in the circumstances of my protest at Albrechtsen's article, room would be found for a 350-word letter, as my response to an article I believed seriously defamatory of my public reputation.
The letter as published above was cut to 150 words - The Australian's normal requested length limit. My letter was published last in a selection of seven - the first two were "pro" - Albrechtsen, the next five "anti". There is no indication to readers that I was replying as a person named prominently and negatively by Albrechtsen, and who believed he had been defamed by her article and was seeking a public right of reply. Following my letter appears a 300-word letter from an academic on labor market flexibility - length constraints do not appear to have been a problem in the case of that letter.
So it appears that I have again been treated with manifest contempt by The Australian's editorial management. And I have, once again, been misled by management reassurance from this powerful organisation that it would respond fairly to my protest.
The lesson is that high-profile staff commentators like Albrechtsen can use defamatory public language about people who express dissident views on major public issues like Australia's involvement in criminal military actions in Iraq, and those people have no proper right of reply in the pages of The Australian.
If any lawyers practicing in the defamation field and reading this and the Albrechtsen article think I may have a sound case for defamation against Janet Albrechtsen and The Australian, I would be glad to hear from them. I could not begin to fund such a case myself - it would have to be on the basis of "if we win, I pay my lawyers". Any surplus after costs and fees would go to a non-US embedded relief fund for Iraqi victims of Fallujah.
What is far more important than my public reputation is that in its excisions, The Australian took out of my letter the very sentences that gave it credibility and strength: the judgements of senior US media columnists Jonathan Schell, Jim Hoagland and Mark Bowden that the real purpose of the US destruction of Fallujah was exemplary collective punishment of a city that had sheltered insurgents; the concerns of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour and the International Red Cross that the US attack on Fallujah had involved war crimes; the admission of Defence Minister Robert Hill that Australian defence force personnel seconded to US forces had probably been involved in the planning and execution of the US attack on Fallujah; and the references to un-embedded news reporting sources Xinhua and Al Jazeeera.
And this sentence:
"The indiscriminate and disproportionate use of weapons of mass destruction (cluster bombs, flesh-melting phosphorus weapons, 2000 kg blockbuster bombs) in a civilian-inhabited city, of itself defines Fallujah as a war crime under the Geneva Conventions."
Without all this, my letter was left simply as the unsupported expression of one person's opinion.
Clearly, those facts were too disturbing to be allowed to reach readers of The Australian, even in a compressed 350 word letter, from a person whose considered judgement that Fallujah was a US war crime had been personally attacked by one of The Australian?s stable of right-wing correspondents as "grotesque", "morally offensive and intellectually bankrupt", "unconcerned with facts and blinded by political motivations" and "hysterical".
In this way, The Australian had proved my point - that our mainstream media, by not passing on to the Australian public more than a small sanitised fraction of what is coming in on international news wires, are shielding us from knowing the full horror of the US destruction of Fallujah and Australia?s participation in this war crime. And The Australian has shown the lengths to which it will go to try to discredit and silence the public voice of anyone who dares to say that two and two make four.
Tony Kevin
Canberra
25 November 2004
For further information on this media release:
Tony Kevin [phone numbers posted]
Letter from Tony Kevin as submitted to the Australian, 24 November: 2004
Dear Sir,
The US destruction of Fallujah was Nazi-style collective punishment. US troops calmly destroyed this city of 300,000 people, that posed no military threat to the US-supported Allawi regime, as a warning to other Iraqis of the heavy price they will pay for politically defying the US-protected regime and for sheltering insurgent fighters.
Reputable American columnists Jonathan Schell, Jim Hoagland and Mark Bowden all agreed this week that the main purpose of the US action in Fallujah was to send a clear deterrent signal to all Iraqis - resist us and we will destroy you, as we destroyed this city.
The indiscriminate and disproportionate use of weapons of mass destruction (cluster bombs, flesh-melting phosphorus weapons, 2000 kg blockbuster bombs) in a civilian-inhabited city, of itself defines Fallujah as a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.
There are also horrifying incidents as reported by independent non-US embedded journalists, e.g., representing Xinhua News, Al Jazeeera News: of hospitals forced to close and patients pushed from their beds into the streets; of unarmed men shot in cold blood while seeking safe-passage out of the city with their wives and children under white flag; of injured people pulled out of buildings into the street and then run over by tanks; of photographers shot down as they filmed battle; of people shot as they tried to swim rivers to safety - no wonder the UN Commissioner for Human Rights (Louise Arbour) and the International Red Cross are protesting vigorously.
Yes, Fallujah is entirely comparable to the Nazi destruction of Warsaw in 1944 and the Russian Army?s destruction of Grozny in 1999. And Defence Minister Hill admits that Australian military planners and soldiers took part in this savage attack.
But our mainstream media, by not passing on to the Australian public more than a small sanitised fraction of what is coming in on international news wires, are shielding us from this awful knowledge. Janet Albrechtsen, read Google and begin to absorb the facts on Fallujah. If you have any humanity, you will be as horrified and ashamed as I am.
Tony Kevin, Canberra
Ten days in Fallujah battlefield"
22/11/2004 11:59Xinhua News
Twelve days after losing contact with a correspondent based in Fallujah, Xinhua reporters were relieved to see him report back for work in deplorable shape on Saturday.
Abdul Rahman, a 30-year-old Fallujah resident working for Xinhua, made a phone call to the Xinhua office in Baghdad with his Iraqna mobile on Nov. 9, which became the last message Xinhua received from him.
He reported on that day that Fallujah had been ripped into two parts controlled by US-Iraqi forces and fighters respectively.
With his words still resonating, Xinhua reporters were happy to see Rahman safe and sound.
Relaxing on a sofa for the first time after 10 days in hell, Rahman calmed down and recounted his experience as a correspondent and eyewitness of the bloody fighting in the past two weeks, as well as his tale of escaping alive.
"I could either escape for life or stay to cover the truth. I chose the latter," he said.
"At the beginning, the resistance in the Jolan district was strong and the American troops backed up. After rounds of air bombings, the area became relatively silent and the Americans pushed into the city with limited resistance," he recalled.
Rahman could not confirm if the US forces used any chemical weapons as some newspapers claimed.
But he told Xinhua that some doctors in Fallujah were shocked to see that many bodies were charred without apparent injuries.
With fierce clashes on the ground and bombardment by US aircraft, many houses were leveled or people were killed.
"My friend and I heard the groaning of some injured people under ruins of some destroyed houses, but we could do nothing for them."
He was the witness of a scene where six injured Iraqis dragged by several US soldiers to a street were rolled over by a tank.
He also saw an Iraqi cameraman gunned down by a sniper while shooting in face of US vehicles.
"I don't know how long it will take me to get over this," said Rahman, still reeling from what he saw.
During the hardest period, helpless Rahman ran and crawled around, looking for shelters and food.
In the last days, Rahman was pushed to the Shuhada district, where US Marines said they trapped most insurgents and geared up for a duel.
Weighing the dangerous situation, Rahman decided to leave the city with the help of a friend whose shop was destroyed in the US raids.
"I thought Abdul Rahman was killed before he came to my house a week ago and asked me to escape with him," said Qahtan Mohamed Jawad, an agricultural engineer.
"We stayed together, ran in Baghdad and there and looked for food and drinks," said the Samaritan.
Rahman said in the city he had ever met a woman whose husband and two sons were shot dead in front of her eyes when the family went to US soldiers to turn themselves in.
Hearing her story, Rahman decided not to go to a mosque in the north which US forces said receives civilians.
The duo also avoided the routes in the west, where helicopters and snipers were taking full positions.
"South is the only chance," he said, "but the roads were full of dangers and we had to crawl with bare hands in darkness and hide in houses in daytime for fear of being shot by American snipers."
"We had only one bottle of water and drank little each time. As for food, we only had dates," said Rahman.
"On the way, we saw groups of insurgents and some spotted us. They let us go after we told them we were reporters," he said.
For consecutive nights, Rahman and Jawad crawled on unpaved roads and rough fields for about 3 kms before they reached the Euphrates river and were ferried to the southwest bank.
On Nov. 19, they were saved by the hospitable locals in the rural area and driven to makeshift refugee camps outside Fallujah.
In Amriahat, a small town near Fallujah, Rahman was reunited with his brothers who were Islamic humanitarian workers and other family members who fled the city ahead of the massive offensive.
"The moment when we reached the other side of the Euphrates, I realized that we were safe," recalled Rahman, whose left arm was wrapped with gauze, a reminder of the arduous journey.
The US-Iraqi forces mounted the major attack against Fallujah on Nov. 8 to retake the city from fighters loyal to Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as they claimed.
A senior US commander said last Thursday that about 1,200 insurgents had been killed in the all-out assault, and 1,025 prisoners were held.
Neither the Iraqi government nor the US military released any figure about civilian casualties.
Link to the English Eastday article
Militant groups control 60 percent of Fallujah: witnesses
www.chinaview.cn2004-11-22 00:07:56
NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Militant groups in battle-torn Fallujah have controlled 60 percent of the central Iraqi city and surrounded dozens of US Marines in Jolan district, witnesses said Sunday.
"Defenders of the city are controlling 60 percent of the city and they are encircling dozens of US soldiers in Jolan neighborhood," eyewitnesses who managed to sneak out of the city told Xinhua.
Residents of Fallujah said the southern part of Fallujah, which is still under control of the militant groups, constitutes the larger part of the city, and US troops only control the north and small eastern spots in the city.
"Some American troops are based in government buildings and they are pounded by fighters," they said.
"In daytime, groups of mujahedeen (Holy War fighters) engage with hit-and-run attacks with US Marines, and at the same time they gear themselves up for the night battles," they said. Fierce fighting and loud explosions resonated throughout Jolan district before the sunset.
US troops continued pounding the area as plumes and columns ofsmoke covered the sky over Jolan and the southern al-Shuhadaa district.
Early this month, US and Iraqi forces launched a major offensiveto crush insurgents, including Zarqawi group, in Fallujah, 50 km west of Baghdad.
About one week later, the US military claimed it had controlled the city.
Enditem
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-11/22/content_2244288.htm
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