US strikes raze Falluja hospital

[BBond]

Winning hearts and minds...

US strikes raze Falluja hospital

A hospital has been razed to the ground in one of the heaviest US air raids in the Iraqi city of Falluja.

Witnesses said only the facade remained of the small Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the centre of the city. There are no reports on casualties.

A nearby medical supplies storeroom and dozens of houses were damaged as US forces continued preparing the ground for an expected major assault.

UN chief Kofi Annan has warned against an attack on the restive Sunni city.

It is the third time since the end of the US-led war that US and Iraqi forces have tried to gain control of Falluja.

They say militants loyal to top al-Qaeda suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are hiding there.

Zarqawi's supporters have been behind some of the worst attacks on coalition and Iraqi forces as well as dozens of kidnappings. Some of the hostages - foreigners and Iraqis - have been beheaded.

'Ruined'

US troops using 155mm howitzers pounded a number of pre-planned targets in Falluja on Saturday.

Along with air strikes - one of the heaviest in recent days - this is all part of what appears to be a steadily increasing pressure on the insurgents, says the BBC's Paul Wood, who is with US marines outside Falluja.

Overnight, a column of armoured vehicles and humvee jeeps carried out attacks in the outskirts of Falluja designed to draw out the rebels and provide fresh targets for the air power and artillery.

These are the kind of preliminary operations which would be carried out before a full-scale assault on Falluja, our correspondent says.

The air strikes reduced the Nazzal hospital, run by a Saudi Arabian Islamic charity, to rubble.

Hospital officials quoted by Reuters news agency say all the contents were ruined.

More people were preparing to flee the city - more than half of the city's estimated 300,000 people have already left.

US marine officers say the full-scale attack will go ahead only once Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has given the order.

"The window really is closing for a peaceful settlement," Mr Allawi said on Friday after meeting EU leaders in Brussels.

In a letter to the leaders of the US, UK and Iraq, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned that the use of force risked alienating Iraqis when their support for elections was vital.

But Mr Allawi called the letter "confused".

He said if Mr Annan thought he could prevent insurgents in Falluja from "inflicting damage and killing", he was welcome to try.

 

[jjzelinski]

Well sheesh, its hard enough to kill these people as it is. We certainly don't want them repairing themselves, just have to blow them up again.

 

[Tylanner]

Looking grim for Fallujah fanatics.

 

[alchemize]

You would think they would perhaps ask the Army *why* it blew up a hospital? I mean, they went to all the effort to interview "hospital officials"? Isn't that just good journalism?

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Oops.

 

[Infohawk]

for the innocents...

 

[jjzelinski]

Shut up *MIS*INFOPARAKEET, falluja is T3H EV1L





























obvious sarcsm, don't take me too seriously Info

 

[dahunan]

Why should anyone care about the Geneva convention AND everyone in this Hospital was just an enemy of freedom anyhow..

 

[Beowulf]

Well we don't want insurgents getting wound care or medical attention when we are trying to kill them.

 

[Infohawk]

Originally posted by: Beowulf
Well we don't want insurgents getting wound care or medical attention when we are trying to kill them.

Do you mean Iraqis who never attacked our country that are trying to get medical attention?

 

[Rogue]

My best guess based on my military training and my knowledge of what's going on over there is that the hospital was very likely used by the militants for attack purposes. Why would you post this and assume that the hospital was NOT even remotely being used for nefarious purposes when only earlier this week a school was rigged up with explosives and the detonation wire run to a mosque. Hmmm....using a school and a mosque for military purposes very clearly makes both building null and void of protection under the law of war and Geneva conventions.

Also, it's very highly likely that had these insurgents NOT decided to kill American troops and their own Iraqi people (provided most of these a$$holes are even Iraqi), that they would have one of the best and most modern Iraqi owned hospitals in all of the Middle East.

 

[Tylanner]

The 300,000 civs that have left value their lives.

 

[BBond]

I'd like to remind everyone of just how precise our precision air strikes have been in the past. And how closely we are following our dismal record.

High-Profile Air Strikes 'Killed Only Civilians'

by Dan Glaister

The American military launched some 50 air strikes designed to kill specific targets during the Iraq war, it emerged yesterday, but none of them found its mark.

Instead the air strikes had a high civilian toll, according to military officials serving at the time.

Until now only a few of the air strikes, such as the use of four 2,000lb "bunker-buster" bombs in an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein at a farm in Masur on March 19, had been made public.

That air strike, which caused the starting date of the war to be brought forward, has been the subject of speculation, with analysts doubting the reliability of the intelligence used and questioning whether Saddam was at the compound.

According to the New York Times, a report prepared in December by the pressure group Human Rights Watch, said the decision to go for high-profile strikes against individual Iraqi leaders had "resulted in dozens of civilian casualties that the US could have prevented if it had taken additional precautions".

A US air force report prepared in April last year also confirms that there were 50 such air strikes, while another report, by the Defense Intelligence Agency last month confirms that all the targets were from the 55-strong list of Iraqi leaders depicted on playing cards distributed to US forces in Iraq.

Those who escaped the raids included not only Saddam Hussein, but also several Iraqi leaders who are said by the US military to be leading the insurrection against American-led forces. These include General Izzat Ibrahim, who was the number two Iraqi official at the time of the war. He is said by US intelligence to have assume the titular leadership of the insurrection after the detention of Saddam.

Marc Garlasco, a former intelligence official during the war who now works for Human Rights Watch, described the campaign as an "abject failure".

"We failed to kill the HVTs (high value targets) and instead killed civilians and engendered hatred and discontent in some of the population," he told the New York Times.

The attacks using precision-guided weapons took place from March 19 to April 18 2003.

At least 13 Iraqi leaders were targeted. Often the raids were trumpeted as being successful.

On April 7 last year, the US Defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, played a video of an attack two days earlier on General Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali".

"We believe that the reign of terror of Chemical Ali has come to an end," said Mr Rumsfeld. But Gen Majid was not captured until August.

Under US army rules of engagement, Mr Rumsfeld was required to authorize any air strike that was likely to result in the deaths of 30 or more civilians.

Fifty such attacks were proposed, and approved, according to the air force commander during the war, General Michael Moseley. But attacks that were time-critical were not subject to such a process. Accordingly, says the Human Rights Watch report, "attacks on leadership likely resulted in the largest number of civilian deaths from the air war".

 

[AnImuS]

bomb the mosque's too!

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Originally posted by: alchemize
You would think they would perhaps ask the Army *why* it blew up a hospital? I mean, they went to all the effort to interview "hospital officials"? Isn't that just good journalism?

I agree. I _hope_ they hit the hospital because of specific intel that it was being used to billet insurgents and/or store weapons, or that it was a mistake. Other things being equal, a civilian hospital is legally a very dicey target.

 

[Infohawk]

Originally posted by: AnImuS
bomb the mosque's too!

Wow. It's no wonder the US is not popular in the world any more.

 

[jjzelinski]

Originally posted by: Infohawk

Originally posted by: AnImuS
bomb the mosque's too!

Wow. It's no wonder the US is not popular in the world any more.

What's a "world"?

 

[alchemize]

50 air strikes, never even got lucky one single time huh?

 

[conjur]

Shades of Kosovo.

 

[Kadarin]

The air strikes reduced the Nazzal hospital, run by a Saudi Arabian Islamic charity, to rubble.

It is ENTIRELY possible that this "hospital" was in reality an ammo dump and staging ground. We are not there at the moment, so we cannot independently verify this.

However, it is certainly foolish to take this article at its word.

 

[Infohawk]

Originally posted by: Astaroth33

However, it is certainly foolish to take this article at its word.

Because the US never makes mistakes right... *cough Chinese embassy* cough*

 

[BBond]

Originally posted by: Astaroth33

The air strikes reduced the Nazzal hospital, run by a Saudi Arabian Islamic charity, to rubble.

It is ENTIRELY possible that this "hospital" was in reality an ammo dump and staging ground. We are not there at the moment, so we cannot independently verify this.

However, it is certainly foolish to take this article at its word.

It is ENTIRELY possible that this "hospital" was in reality a hospital. We are not there at the moment, so we cannot independently verify this.

You could make an argument that this hospital was a landing site for alien spaceships. We aren't there. How would we know?

We do know this hospital was a hospital. We do know American bombs razed it to the ground.

Are there any hospitals where you are? Would you buy lame excuses like the one you proposed if they were bombed to rubble by a foreign invader?

 

[glugglug]

The hospital had biological weaopns. Like pennicilin for instance.

 

[Valvoline6]

Of course the US never does anything right. All 50 bombs missed. LMAO.

You guys are nothing but Radicals, and are completely irrelevant. Outside of your little world people think you are immature and roll their eyes. Few really listen to you, and even fewer ever believe a word you say. Keep at it, you make the other side look better.

 

[BBond]

Originally posted by: Valvoline6
Of course the US never does anything right. All 50 bombs missed. LMAO.

You guys are nothing but Radicals, and are completely irrelevant. Outside of your little world people think you are immature and roll their eyes. Few really listen to you, and even fewer ever believe a word you say. Keep at it, you make the other side look better.

If you have any evidence which proves that ANY of the U.S. bombs killed anyone but civilians, please feel free to present it. Otherwise I would suggest that it is you who lives in your own little world and it is you, therefore, who is completely irrelevant due to your refusal to believe known facts.