Reports from Falluja

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Dr. Ahmed Ghanim's nightmarish week began with a phone call in the operating room of a triage center in downtown Fallujah.

On the line was the manager of the city's General Hospital. Iraqi national guardsmen and U.S. Marines, the manager said, had entered the hospital, handcuffed the doctors and were forcing the patients out to the parking lot.

The guardsmen "stole the mobile phones, the hospital safe where the money is kept and damaged the ambulances and cars," said Ghanim, an orthopedic surgeon who works at the hospital. "The Americans were more sympathetic with the hospital staff and . . . untied the doctors and allowed them to go outside with the patients."

But the worst was yet to come. In the coming days, Ghanim would narrowly escape a bombing, then run through his city's battle-torn streets. He would walk hungry and scared for miles, carrying with him memories of the people he could not save.
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After six days of intense combat against the Fallujah insurgents, US warplanes, tanks and mortars have left a shattered landscape of gutted buildings, crushed cars and charred bodies.

A drive through the city revealed a picture of utter destruction, with concrete houses flattened, mosques in ruins, telegraph poles down, power and phone lines hanging slack and rubble and human remains littering the empty streets. The north-west Jolan district, once an insurgent stronghold, looked like a ghost town, the only sound the rumbling of tank tracks.

US Marines pointed their assault rifles down abandoned streets, past Fallujah's simple amusement park, now deserted. Four bloated and burnt bodies lay on the main street, not far from US tanks and soldiers. The stench of the remains hung heavy in the air, mixing with the dust.

Another body lay stretched out on the next block, its head blown off, perhaps in one of the countless explosions which rent the city day and night for nearly a week. Some bodies were so mutilated it was impossible to tell if they were civilians or militants, male or female.
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Water supplies to Tall Afar, Samarra and Fallujah have been cut off during US attacks in the past two months, affecting up to 750,000 civilians. This appears to form part of a deliberate US policy of denying water to the residents of cities under attack. If so, it has been adopted without a public debate, and without consulting Coalition partners. It is a serious breach of international humanitarian law, and is deepening Iraqi opposition to the United States, other coalition members, and the Iraqi government.

Tall Afar
On 19 September 2004, the Washington Post reported that US forces "had turned off" water supplies to Tall Afar "for at least three days". Turkish television reported
a statement from the Iraqi Turkoman Front that "Tall Afar is completely surrounded.
Entries and exits are banned. The water shortage is very serious".

Samarra
"Water and electricity [were] cut off" during the assault on Samarra on Friday 1
October 2004, according to Knight Ridder Newspapers and the Independent.
The Washington Post explicitly blames "U.S. forces" for this.

Fallujah
On 16 October the Washington Post reported that:
"Electricity and water were cut off to the city [Fallujah] just as a fresh wave of strikes
began Thursday night, an action that U.S. forces also took at the start of assaults on
Najaf and Samarra."

Residents of Fallujah have told the UN's Integrated Regional Information
Networks that "hey had no food or clean water and did not have time to store
enough to hold out through the impending battle". The water shortage has
been confirmed by other civilians fleeing Fallujahxiv, Fadhil Badrani, a BBC
journalist in Falluja, confirmed on 8 November that "he water supply has been cut
off"

Other cases
There have been allegations that the water supply was cut off during the assault
on Najaf in August 2004, and during the invasion of Basra in 2003. We have not
investigated these claims.
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