US helicopters launch Falluja attack: Fallujans ask UN to Investigate war crimes

Aljazeera's correspondent in the besieged Iraqi city, Abd Al-Adhim Muhammad, personally witnessed the attack on Monday.

Muhammad added that two residents were taken to hospital just moments after the first attack. A CNN journalist embedded with US troops in Falluja reported that at least 10 marines had also been injured.

US occupation soldiers pounded two districts with heavy machine gun fire, local residents said.

Skirmishes in the Golan and Shuhada districts broke out around 11:20 (07:20 GMT) and were ongoing.

Despairing at a largely ignored peace pact, town elders have written to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan asking him to mediate between resistance fighters and occupation forces.

Delegation to UN

They also urged Annan to set up an international investigation into the US-led occupation of Iraq.

Speaking on behalf of the Falluja town council, Muhammad Tariq Abd Allah said some of the council had "met with UN officials at the Amman office of the UN special envoy, Ross Mountain, and given them a message for the UN secretary general asking for his mediation.

"We told the UN people that if this mediation works, we are ready to ensure that the people of Falluja will turn in their heavy weapons and respect any agreement reached," he said.

Abd Allah stressed it was important the UN appoints a neutral mediator "who will give us guarantees that the Americans will also respect their end of the agreement".

Occupation war crimes

The Falluja delegation chief, Shaikh Muhammad Hamad al-Shihan, said he wanted the UN to know of the terrible hardship in Falluja since the occupation began.

"We are facing what can be called ... war crimes, and the situation can no longer bear the actions of the occupation forces who are behaving outside all international laws."

Al-Shihan also urged Annan to intervene quickly "personally to stop the bloodbath".

"The human rights violations that happened in Falluja are very serious and the massacres that happened there are unprecedented," he said.

The US marines launched their offensive on 5 April after the murder of four US civilian contractors 50km west of Baghdad.

Iraq's interim health minister, Khudayr Abbas, said that by Thursday, 271 Iraqis had been killed in the city.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/83DD9200-265A-47D8-83E3-D9753608DCB4.htm