Pipol Power

The Iraqi city of Fallujah was the scene of war crimes by U.S. troops last April. This time it is Najaf's turn. The city’s top health official talked about "a real catastrophe" for local health services. Ambulances are prevented from reaching the injured, US troops have turned the city’s best-equipped hospital into a base of operations and are indiscriminately firing machine guns and rockets into civilian neighborhoods according to reports. British activist Jo Wilding, who witnessed the siege of Fallujah, writes now:

It repeats itself: the main hospital has been closed down by US troops and is being used for military operations, ambulances are being prevented, again by US troops, from moving around the town, which is being pounded from the air while the US and the Iraqi militias, disparate armed groups, fight in the streets and
US soldiers drive around with loudspeakers, ordering civilians to leave or be killed.It could be Falluja in April; this time it’s Najaf. I hear that Kut has been bombed, the hospitals reporting massive casualties which the US says were fighters, the locals say were mostly civilians. I hear nothing about Nasariya, Samawa, although I know that when Najaf kicks off, my friends in the other southern towns just have to lock their doors and wait.

More in Health & Occupation Watch.