Friday, September 17, 2004

More Airstrikes on Falluja

A U.S. air strike on a "terrorist meeting site" in Falluja Thursday night killed approximately 60 foreign fighters with ties to known terrorist leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the Coalition Press Information Center said.

...The airstrike destroyed three buildings inside the "terrorist compound," according to CPIC.

Hours later, U.S. forces conducted another airstrike on Zarqawi targets in Falluja.

The Coalition Press Information Center reported that interim Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi authorized the attack on a "terrorist compound" located in the south-central part of Falluja, which took place at about 2:45 a.m. Friday (6:45 p.m. Thursday ET).

There was no immediate word on casualties in the second strike.
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Airstrike after airstrike after airstrike. Just another day in the continuing razing of a city that dared to piss off the Madmen of Pennsylvania Avenue. I wonder how much of Falluja is left.

And immediately after, suicide bomb blast rocks Baghdad.

An earlier report of the precision airstrikes (that's what we always call them):

News agency reports from Falluja, and local hospital officials, said that the airstrikes killed at least 16 civilians, including women and children, and that an ambulance was hit by a shell, killing the driver and six occupants. This was denied by a coalition press officer. "The U.S. military is confirming that we did not hit an ambulance and we did not hit a marketplace," the press officer, Sharon Walker, said, referring to news agency accounts. She said that the 25 deaths "of Zarqawi operatives or anti-Iraqi forces" were an "initial estimate," leaving open the possibility of more casualties.

...The American military has limited its attacks to airstrikes. U.S. forces on Monday patrolled the outskirts of the city. Using loudspeakers, U.S. troops called on a local militant Islamic leader to "come out and fight."
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Standing on the outskirts calling like idiots and bullies, while your air force bombs the city to holy hell. I bet those are some proud Marines.

Despite the military's denial, witnesses said the bombing targeted the city's residential al-Shurta neighborhood, damaging buildings and raising clouds of black smoke, The Associated Press reported. Dr. Adel Khamis of the Falluja General Hospital told the news agency that at least 16 people were killed and 12 others wounded. The ambulance was hit by a shell, killing the driver, a paramedic and five patients inside the vehicle, another hospital official, Hamid Salaman, told The AP.
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"The conditions here are miserable - an ambulance was bombed, three houses destroyed and men and women killed," the hospital's director, Rafayi Hayad al-Esawi, told Al-Jazeera television by telephone in a report posted on the satellite station's Web site. "The American Army has no morals." Witnesses told The AP that American warplanes repeatedly swooped low over the city and that artillery units deployed on the outskirts of the city also opened fire. The explosions started at sunrise and continued for several hours. The military statement said the attack occurred at 6:07 Monday morning. One explosion went off in a marketplace in Falluja as the first vendors began to set up their stalls, wounding several people and shattering windows, witnesses told the news agency.

You can't strike anything in a city precisely from the air. It's disgusting that they continue to claim precision strikes against militants. There is nothing left here for America but shame.

And death.

Iraqi insurgents pressed their assault on U.S. and allied forces Thursday as two Americans and a Briton were kidnapped from their Baghdad house and three Marines were killed, bringing the number of U.S. military deaths in the country this month to at least 52.
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America, get out.

Google doesn't even have mention of the "pounding" that Falluja is taking today on their News headlines page. You have to enter a search to see it.

Bob Goodsell offers a link to the excellent Bob Harris: Our savage numbness

A new report says Saddam had no WMD, but he had "clear intent". Which do you think will be the focus of the GOP?

Ibrahim Jassim poses for a photograph with his wife, Zahra Jassim, and sons, Sayf Jassim, right, and The al-Faqar, outside their tent at a sprawling refugee camp in Kirkuk, Iraq, Tuesday Sept. 14, 2004. As many as 500 Kurds a day streamed into Kirkuk last month in a sudden land rush that took city officials and U.S. troops by surprise and has left the nascent city government struggling to cope with dozens of refugee camps on once vacant patches of ground. Source

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