More than 600 Killed in Fallujah

"Ahmed was in my class," he says. "He was younger than me. He was standing next to the wall of the secondary school. He was trying to cross the street and he was hit by a bullet. The American troops fired the bullet."

Over the weekend -- with more than 600 of Fallujah's residents dead and thousands injured -- US Administrator Paul Bremer declared a unilateral cease fire in Fallujah and said the Americans wanted to give the women and children of Fallujah a chance to flee the city, but US military snipers remained on roof-tops and the Marines theater commander declared his troops retained their right to defend themselves.

But in Fallujah's clinics there's little evidence of a cease fire: "They said there was a cease-fire," screams clinic director Mekki al-Azar. "They said 12 o'clock so people went out, Everyone who went out was shot and this place was full. Half of them were dead."

Film-maker Julia Guest, who traveled to Fallujah on a convoy delivering relief supplies tells Pacifica the clinic's ambulance was shot twice by American snipers -- also during the cease-fire. The second time the ambulance was shot it was carrying American and British citizens who had negotiated an agreement with the marines to rescue the injured from an area with heavy US sniper fire.

"It has blue sirens," she recalls. "Its donated by the Kingdom of Spain. It's carrying oxygen bottles and the damage to the ambulance was such that two of the wheels were blown off so they were left without an ambulance and there are bullet holes all over the sides and back from the second shooting."

At the same time, the resistance continues to gain steam.

*****

Gunfire - an ambulance rushes to the scene as an American tank burns on the main road to Fallujah. Every day more Iraqi's take up arms against the occupation disgusted at mounting civilian casualties in Fallujah and the South of Iraq where the US military is fighting the Mehdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr. Ibrahim Hassen is 40 years old. He fled the city with his wife and three children on Friday. An American bomb had destroyed his neighbors house and killed three people inside, but the final straw was when he was shot by snipers during the cease fire as he went to get food aid from a neighborhood mosque.

Now, for the first time, Ibrahim Hassen says he's going to pick up a gun and fight the Americans.

"When I see my neighbors, the house collapsed on his head. In all the streets where I live all the houses were destroyed."

"I will take revenge on the United States," he promises. "Until the last breath that I have."

( In nearby Abu Grahib, Amar abu Zaid and his family of 58 have taken shelter in a relatives house. The family had gathered together in Fallujah from all over Iraq before the bombing began.

"This is my daughter who was getting married to my nephew," he explains. "We had to celebrate that. We called it a challenge wedding celebration. Last night, after the wedding, when we got out of Fallujah on the road back one of our women was pregnant and she started to give birth so we couldn't take her to a hospital. She gave birth in the car. A son was born and we named him Mujahad or Holy Warrior and I ask God for him to be a mujahad."

http://www.pacifica.org/programs/reportfromiraq/PacInIraq-20040412.html