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(BBC News) – Doctors in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are reporting a high level of birth defects, with some blaming weapons used by the US after the Iraq invasion. The city witnessed fierce fighting in 2004 as US forces carried out a major offensive against insurgents.
Now, the level of heart defects among newborn babies is said to be 13 times higher than in Europe. The US military says it is not aware of any official reports showing an increase in birth defects in the area.
BBC world affairs editor John Simpson visited a new, US-funded hospital in Fallujah where paediatrician Samira al-Ani told him that she was seeing as many as two or three cases a day, mainly cardiac defects.
Our correspondent also saw children in the city who were suffering from paralysis or brain damage – and a photograph of one baby who was born with three heads.
OFFICIALS WARN: WOMEN SHOULD NOT HAVE CHILDREN
He adds that he heard many times that officials in Fallujah had warned women that they should not have children. Doctors and parents believe the problem is the highly sophisticated weapons the US troops used in Fallujah six years ago.
British-based Iraqi researcher Malik Hamdan told the BBC’s World Today programme that doctors in Fallujah were witnessing a “massive unprecedented number” of heart defects, and an increase in the number of nervous system defects.
She said that one doctor in the city had compared data about birth defects from before 2003 – when she saw about one case every two months – with the situation now, when, she saw cases every day.
“I’ve seen footage of babies born with an eye in the middle of the forehead, the nose on the forehead.”
Ms Hamdan said that based on data from January this year, the rate of congenital heart defects was 95 per 1,000 births – 13 times the rate found in Europe.
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(The Guardian) Nov. 13, 2009 – The children of Falluja Link to this video
Doctors in Iraq’s war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants, compared to a year ago, and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting.
The extraordinary rise in birth defects has crystallized over recent months as specialists working in Falluja’s over-stretched health system have started compiling detailed clinical records of all babies born.
Neurologists and obstetricians in the city interviewed by the Guardian say the rise in birth defects – which include a baby born with two heads, babies with multiple tumors, and others with nervous system problems – are unprecedented and at present unexplainable.
A group of Iraqi and British officials, including the former Iraqi minister for women’s affairs, Dr Nawal Majeed a-Sammarai, and the British doctors David Halpin and Chris Burns-Cox, have petitioned the UN general assembly to ask that an independent committee fully investigate the defects and help clean up toxic materials left over decades of war – including the six years since Saddam Hussein was ousted.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Inconvenient truths must be hidden away
“The city witnessed fierce fighting in 2004 as US forces carried out a major offensive against insurgents.“
I know this is not the topic of this post, but I can’t help pointing out what a crock this is. What the city witnessed was not “fierce fighting”, but near-total destruction, and a massacre of civilians, many of them as they tried to comply with U.S. advice to evacuate before the assault. Dahr Jamail, who was in the city during the first massacre, and was closely in touch during the second, more deadly and destructive one, very correctly called it Iraq’s Guernica.
Dahr Jamail was excellent. The best independent journalist writing in English on Iraq.
The city was destroyed and the people put to the sword in massive collective punishment as Bush revenge for a bunch of Rumsfield’s mutilated and killed mercenaries. The fighters of course had left the town at that point.
Now we get to see propaganda puff pieces of the “new” better Fallujah where everyone loves NATO
Dahr is quite an amazing fellow. He is very humble, honest, and deeply committed.
He certainly seems that way. I have never had the fortune to meet him but like his work
This is an image I created after the dropping of White Phosphorous, & the burning of Fallujah.
The “battle”(hah) of the city was a revenge attack, a war crime, & comparison to My Lai is an insult to humanity.
Not to diminish the atrocity of My Lai one iota.
I don`t know how to explain my feelings about the difference, but to me they are huge.
My Lai was a horrific crime committed spontaneously on the spur of the moment by a small number of troops under the orders of one individual. You could think of it as mass murder in the second degree. The two assaults on Falluja were officially ordered and planned in detail at the highest levels of the U.S. military, no doubt including the Commander Guy himself – state massacre in the first degree with special circumstances.
Falluja was a city roughly the size of Cincinatti. The population was between 250,000-300,000*. After the massacre of 2004 the city was all but uninhabitable, and as far as I know until now not all that much reconstruction has taken place, though the military propagandists and the compliant press have tried from time to time to pretend things are all better there.
The untold aspect of the Falluja story is that Falluja was never a “hotbed of Saddamism”. In fact, the opposite is the case. There were a number of purges in the area as a result of defiance against the regime. When the 2003 invasion took place there was no fighting from Falluja. The city was hunkered down quietly, hoping for the best. Falluja was one of the few major cities that managed to maintain order, organize security, and avoid the chaos, looting, and criminal behaviour that was so rampant in Baghdad and other cities. It was not until the American military decided they needed to move in and set up a base in the city that problems began as a direct reaction to the unnecessary presence, and mostly to the boorish behaviour of the Americans there.
*Before the November, 2004 massacre the news reports were consistently describing Falluja as a city of around 300,000. After November 2004 I noticed that the U.S. media changed that number to 200,000. I suppose this was an effort on the part of the military
liarspropagandistsspokespersons to minimize the impact of what they had done there..
I remember this incident very clearly …
US Central Command in Qatar said soldiers in Falluja had shot at gunmen who fired at them with AK-47 assault rifles. “The unit exercised its inherent right to self-defence and returned fire,” war headquarters said.
“There were a lot of people who were armed and who were throwing rocks. How is a US soldier to tell the difference between a rock and a grenade?” Lieutenant Colonel Eric Nantz said.
A local Sunni Muslim cleric, Kamal Shaker Mahmoud, said the protesters had asked the troops to leave the school so that lessons could resume there now the war is over. “It was a peaceful demonstration. They did not have any weapons.”
A company — 100 or so soldiers — from the 82nd Airborne Division were using the school as a barracks, officers said.
“They are stealing our oil and they are slaughtering our people,” said Shuker Abdullah Hamid, a cousin of one of the victims, venting the fury felt by many residents. US helicopters hovered overhead as angry mourners buried the dead today. The white walls of houses near the school were pock-marked by bullets, bullet-riddled and wrecked cars stood by the roadside and traces of blood marked the ground.
BIRTH OF DEMOCRACY IN RAVAGED CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION
On Monday, Jay Garner, the retired United States general and now civil administrator of Iraq, declared the beginning of the “birth of democracy” in the ravaged cradle of civilization.
“Today, on the birthday of Saddam Hussein, let us start the democratic process for the children of Iraq.”
That night, US troops opened fire on the group of Iraqi demonstrators near Baghdad, in the Sunni city of Fallujah. To the Americans it was justified self-defense, but to most residents it was murder. What is beyond dispute is that 15 Iraqis were dead and 70 wounded lay in the main hospital, surrounded by angry family members. The dead included three boys, ages 8 to 10. No Americans were injured.
HRW: Violent Response in Fallujah
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Yes, this incident was the turning point for Falluja, which had been seething over the boorish conduct of the Americans ever since they rolled into the otherwise peaceful city. It is worth noting that independent investigations led to the conclusion that there were no weapons among, and no gunfire from the demonstrators. Nor was there any necessity for the Americans to fire on the demonstration even IF there had been a few people there with weapons since the school was surrounded by a high, thick wall, and there were plenty of buildings in which and behind which they could have taken shelter. This incident is just another example of the American military’s utter and complete disregard for the human dignity, not to mention the lives of the people of Falluja in particular and Iraq in general.
PS As for Garner’s blather about the “birth of democracy”, more American bull%$^#.
Hurria,
“My Lai was a horrific crime committed spontaneously on the spur of the moment by a small number of troops under the orders of one individual. You could think of it as mass murder in the second degree. The two assaults on Falluja were officially ordered and planned in detail at the highest levels of the U.S. military, no doubt including the Commander Guy himself – state massacre in the first degree with special circumstances.”
I knew exactly what you stated, but writing about it in anger, I didn`t know how to put it. I didn`t want my feelings to get in the way of the truth.
I was afraid I would diminish one or both atrocities.
I often express my thoughts in images.
I know what you mean. Not only the nature, but the scope and magnitude of the U.S. crimes against Falluja also tend to make what happened in My Lai look small, but of course it was not. Murdering human beings is never a small act.
exactly.