Iraq: Sixty Nine Days In Fallujah General Hospital Emergency Department

In Iraq there is an ongoing massacre. Below are the figures of the dead and wounded brought daily to just one hospital in the country’s largest governorate, Anbar Province, the Emergency Department of the Fallujah General Hospital, between 28th February 2014 and 7th May 2014. They are the victims of the US imposed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s militias.

The UN representative in Iraq is near silent and the varying Ambassadors in Iraq are silent, including those of the US and UK whose actions and lies about fictional “weapons of mass destruction” are responsible for the ongoing daily carnage. 

Eleven relentless years of death and heartbreak. Eleven years ago the airways were invaded with sound bites of a “tyrant who kills his own people.” As their tyrant “kills his own people”, the silence is deafening. Normal services such as clean water and constant electricity are non-existent. (Imagine the nightmare of working in a hospital with interruptions of the machinery needed to keep patients alive, resuscitated, monitored, anaesthetised).

Thus, given the power interruptions and tense situation, the full numbers are incomplete. But these provide a small sample of one city’s unending tragedy in a province under siege, under a US imposed leader using US supplied weapons. This comes with inestimable thanks to the meticulous collating of Dr Muhamad Al-Darraj.

Wednesday 7th May: Government troops targeted the doctors’ residence at the hospital at 1am, causing extensive damage. The building was hit “by two projectiles.” It is the twelfth time the hospital has been bombed and the third time that the doctors’ quarters have been hit. There were also explosions reported in the blood donation department of the hospital after a call for people to donate urgently. Reports on casualties are still awaited. 

Hospitals are afforded special protection under the 1949 Geneva Convention as are all staff – medical personnel as well as drivers, clerical workers, cleaners, cooks, maintenance staff. Attacking a hospital is a war crime. But the Iraqi government troops have learned well from the Americans who of course boasted of training them and who on Sunday 7th November 2004: “‘ stormed the Fallujah General Hospital. “They rounded up all the doctors, pushed them face down on the floor and handcuffed them with plastic straps behind their backs. With the hospital occupied, those wounded by the US aerial bombings headed to the Fallujah Central Health Clinic. And so at 5:30 am on Tuesday November 9th, US warplanes bombed that clinic as well, killing thirty five patients, fifteen medical staff, four nurses, five support staff and four doctors, according to a doctor who survived. US fire also targeted an ambulance, killing five patients and the driver.”(1) 

Tuesday 6th May: Forty five wounded, including twelve children and four women. Seven dead. 

Monday 5th May 2014: Nine wounded, four killed. 

Sunday 4th May: Five wounded including one woman and two children. Fifteen dead, including five children. 

Saturday 3rd May: Seven wounded, including one woman and two children. Two dead. 

Friday 2nd May: Eight wounded. Two dead. 

Thursday 1st May (the eleventh anniversary of George W Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln): seven wounded including one woman and one young girl. 

30th April (Iraq election day, from which Anbar province was excluded from voting due to the government attacking it, such is democracy in the “New Iraq”): Ten wounded including a woman and another girl. 

Tuesday 29th April: Ten wounded, including one seventy year old lady and a young girl. 

Monday 28th April (Saddam Hussein’s Birthday and formerly a national holiday): Five wounded. Two dead – an eighteen year old girl and a forty year old woman. 

27th-22nd April: Data not available. 

Monday 21st April: By midday: Five wounded, including one child and one woman. Six dead. 

Sunday 20th April: Five wounded including three children. One dead. 

Saturday 19th April: Data not available. 

Friday 18th April: By midday: Four wounded including one child. One dead. 

Thursday 17th April: By Mid-day: Seven wounded, including one child. One dead. 

Wednesday – Tuesday, 16th -15th: Data not available.

Monday 14th April: By midday: Fifteen wounded, including five children and two women. Three dead, including one child. 

Sunday 13th April: Five wounded, including two children. Two dead. 

Saturday 12th April: Data not available. 

Friday 11th April: By mid-day: Fourteen wounded, including one woman and three children. Three dead. 

Thursday 10th April not available. 

Wednesday 9th April: By midday: Twenty three wounded, including two women and six children. Five dead including one woman. 

Tuesday 8th April: Twenty two wounded, including three women and one child. Four killed including two children. 

7th-5th April: Data not available. 

Friday 4th April: Nine wounded. One killed. 

3rd April-29th March: Data not available. 

Friday 28th March: Fifty wounded. Thirteen dead. 

Thursday 27th March: One killed. 

26th-24th March: Data not available. 

Sunday 23rd March: Eight wounded. Three killed. 

22nd-20th March: Data not available. 

Wednesday 19th March: Forty three wounded. Fifteen killed including a number of women and children. 

Tuesday 18th March: Ten wounded. One child killed. 

17th-13th March: Data not available. 

12th March: Three wounded. 

11th-6th March: Data not available. 

Wednesday 5th March: Ten wounded. Five killed. 

Tuesday 4th March: Four wounded, including a woman who lost her hands to shrapnel wounds. Four dead, two children and two young women. 

3rd – 1st March: Data not available. 

Friday 28th February: Seven wounded. 

A Danish journalist asked a Fallujahan what he thought about what was happening. The reply was: “What would you feel if the Danish army shelled your city?” The journalist’s eyes flooded with tears. 

1,666 people died in Iraq the first three months of 2014 due to acts of violence, according to UN statistics. Deaths in Anbar Province are now being excluded from Iraq government statistics, it is understood. 

However, according to the meticulous Dr Al-Darraji who has recorded casualty figures: “The total civilian casualties among people of Fallujah since the beginning of war against Anbar Province so far are 1,296 wounded and 295 killed … in the name of US and UK style Freedom, Democracy and Liberation.”

1. http://www.internationalist.org/fallujarape0412.html