WAR CRIMES IN FALLUJAH: PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE. posted by Richard Seymour

Doctor Salam Ismael took aid to Fallujah last month. This is his story of how the US murdered a city

IT WAS the smell that first hit me, a smell that is difficult to describe, and one that will never leave me. It was the smell of death. Hundreds of corpses were decomposing in the houses, gardens and streets of Fallujah. Bodies were rotting where they had fallen—bodies of men, women and children, many half-eaten by wild dogs...

Socialist Worker publishes the first evidence of
a massacre of civilians by US troops in Fallujah

LONDON, 15 FEBRUARY 2005 -- In November of last year, US forces
in Iraq launched an all-out assault on the city of Fallujah. They claimed they were hunting down terrorists.

Tomorrow Socialist Worker carries the first hard evidence that the attack on Fallujah involved the systematic and deliberate murder of hundreds of civilians. We print at length the testimony of Dr Salam Ismael, who visited Fallujah last month with humanitarian aid from Britain.

He describes his interviews with eye-witnesses to the massacre, including a 17 year old girl who saw her whole family shot dead in their home by US troops. Another family talks of how US snipers opened fire on a crowd of civilians that had been ordered to gather outside a mosque carrying white flags.

Dr Ismael worked with Michael Burke, the award-winning cameraman
and producer, to produce video footage of mass burials of civilians outside Fallujah. This may be aired by Channel 4 News this week.

"Nobody know how many died. The Americans are now bulldozing the
neighbourhoods to cover up their crime," says Dr Ismael. "What happened in Fallujah was an act of barbarity. The whole world must be told the truth."

The first truck arrives, it has 77 bodies. One by one the black body bags containing the remains are unloaded. Each bag is numbered. They are lined up to match the number painted on bricks that are to serve as tombstones.

The bags are carefully opened and each corpse is checked for some form of identification. Only five have names. Many of the bodies are swollen and blackened, their faces and limbs eaten by dogs. They have been dead for some time.

There are murmurs of prayers from the men preparing their last resting place. Each person is carefully laid to rest in a carved hollow inside a long trench.

Occasionally one of the bodies is recognised and a howl of tears and rage goes up from the crowd.