Iraqis emerge amid the ruins of Fallujah as Red Crescent delivers first aid

Agence France Presse
26 November 2004

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - Mohammed Chibib pleaded with the marine colonel, coaxing him a little further down the street to another house. Behind him a family of seven stood at their gate, clutching their first fresh food and water in days. "Please colonel, you have just one more family here," said Chibib, a staff member with the Iraqi Red Crescent Society which only Wednesday set up offices in the shattered city of Fallujah.

For the first time since a massive US-led assault was launched against this rebel stronghold, Red Crescent aid has just got to those Iraqis who did not flee in the weeks leading up to the offensive and who were trapped in their homes.

Six houses down, a man emerged with his wife and three children, according to an AFP photographer. More aid boxes were handed out, and then the man pointed towards another nearby house. Colonel Craig Tucker, whose patrol had stumbled on the first family and sent for the Red Crescent to come, paused. This impromptu aid mission was not planned and his marines were strung out along one of Fallujah's still dangerous streets. "Okay, okay. We'll go," he said.

His marines took the lead, securing the road before the Red Crescent ambulance pulled a little further forward. Down the road, an old man emerged with only a shabby bathrobe to protect him against the biting cold. "I am alone. Please, I have no food, nothing, it's very hard for me," he cried as the convoy reached him. Like others before him, the old man knew another house where Iraqis have huddled, waiting out the fighting that engulfed their city. Two young men, brothers, had hung a white scrap of cloth from their gate. "When the fighting started in Fallujah we knew we had to stay in the house. We could not move. If I died, I died in my house," said one of the young men. "We're so happy to see you because we have only flour to mix with water."

The Red Crescent's Fallujah coordinator, Jotiar Nafaa, estimates that between 150 and 175 families are left in the city that once had a population of 300,000. Most residents fled to Baghdad or the surrounding countryside as the showdown between insurgents and US-led forces built towards its inevitable eruption. According to Iraq's national security adviser Qassem Daoud, more than 2,000 people died in the assault.

Nafaa, in his first meeting Thursday with Colonel Gary Montgomery, the officer appointed by the military to help coordinate the Red Crescent's aid efforts, argued that his staffers had to have almost immediate access to the bodies. "There are a big number of people coming to our offices in Baghdad and asking about their missing people... Every 10 or 15 minutes there is a phone call from a different place" asking about the situation, he said. Nafaa pushed for a trip into the city Thursday, saying his staff were frustrated by their inaction. Montgomery did not reject the idea, but it seemed unlikely; the city was still plagued by occasional sniper attacks. Only two days ago residents trying to make their way to an aid distribution center in a mosque came under fire, forcing authorities to impose a 24-hour curfew. Montgomery assured Nafaa the curfew would be lifted soon. Nafaa tried to negotiate the entry of another aid convoy into the city. The colonel would later acknowledge that the Red Crescent was frustrated with the military, but said steps had been made during the meeting.

Both sides had agreed to talk at least twice a day, and establishing a single point of contact with the military would hopefully cut out some of the confusion. "It should start getting better. We weren't getting the answers we needed from them and they weren't getting what they wanted from us and it was making them frustrated," he said.

Out in the street a visibly angered Chibib said the Red Crescent had to try everything possible to see people still hiding in the city, because "no one can go in the street and come to us to ask for help".

"We know there are people who have nothing," he said, calling back to one of the families who the Red Crescent did reach. "Don't worry, we're coming back," he said.

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Citation: "Iraqis emerge amid the ruins of Fallujah as Red Crescent delivers first aid," AFP, 26 November 2004.