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Reports
direct from Iraq
Mainstream media often fails to
tell the story of the impact of war on innocent civilians. Voices
office is in touch with several individuals and groups in Iraq
standing alongside Iraqi people as they face the terror of war.
Iraq Indymedia
Electronic Iraq
Occupation Watch
Iraq Peace Team
Robert Fisk
Jo
Wilding
Iraq
Indymedia - an independent
media centre started in Baghdad on 13 May 2003
Electronic
Iraq - news, analysis, opinion and reports direct from
Iraq created by Voices in the Wilderness US and Electronic Intifada
Occuptation
Watch - based in Baghdad, monitoring the US/UK occupation
Iraq
peace team - Kathy Kelly, Voices in the Wilderness,
and others from the US have been, and continue to be, in Iraq
living alongside ordinary Iraqis as they face the horror of war
and its aftermath. Read
the up-to-date Iraq
Diaries.
Excerpt from Eyewitness
report, March 27th-April 3rd
AL KINDI HOSPITAL VISIT, April 1st
IPT, including Dr. April Hurley, visited with the Director of
the Al Kindi Hospital, Dr. Osama Saaleh.
Dr. Saaleh reported that on March 31st his hospital had received
45 casualties, including seven who were dead on arrival, from
two bombings -- one in the Al Ameen district and the other in
the Al Dhahliyeh district, both on the periphery of Baghdad.
The staff provided photos of an incident on March 30th at about
6 AM in the district of Zaafraniyeh in which two closely related
families in four homes were reportedly bombed, the Shurta houses
near the old Diala bridge. There was only one survivor of the
incident, Ali Ismayal, 12. Fifteen of the other 16 people who
died were: Sabah Gedan Karbeet, 42, male; Husham Sabah Eadan,
10, male; Malek Sabah Eadan, 7, male; Ali Sabah Eadan, 4, male;
Madeeha Abd Kathem, 48, female; Sabeha Awad Merdas, 58, female;
Fatema Zaboon Maktoof, 27, female; Nora Sabah Gadan, 14, female;
Esmaeel Abbas Hamza, 49, male; Muhammed Taha Abbas, 12, male;
Abeer Taha Abbas, 9 female; Muna Taha Abbas, 23, female; Abbas
Esmaeel Abbas, 7, male; Azhar Ali Taher, 33, female; and, Kameela
Abd Kathem, 49, female.
Ali's aunt, Jamela Abbas, the only surviving relative of the relatives
who wasn't at the home at the time of the bombing, confirmed reports
from the hospital staff that Ali sustained third-degree burns
on 35 percent of his body and charring of both arms, which required
amputation near the shoulders. He also had pulmonary injury from
smoke inhalation. Extensive skin grafting and multiple plastic
surgeries will be necessary. Her address is Zaafraniyeh, District
50, Street 23, House 8.
Read
the collected articles of Robert
Fisk
08 April 2003
Amid Allied jubilation, a child lies in agony, clothes soaked
in blood They lay in lines, the car salesman who'd just lost his
eye but whose feet were still dribbling blood, the motorcyclist
who was shot by American troops near the Rashid Hotel, the 50-year-old
female civil servant, her long dark hair spread over the towel
she was lying on, her face, breasts, thighs, arms and feet pock-marked
with shrapnel from an American cluster bomb. For the civilians
of Baghdad, this is the real, immoral face of war, the direct
result of America's clever little "probing missions" into Baghdad.
....
Jo
Wilding's diary - almost daily powerful personal accounts
of life in Baghdad up to the beginning of April 2003
Excerpt from War
and grief 09 April 2003
This war has been a disaster for the Iraqi people.
Civilian casualties have occurred in numbers and ways that were
unnecessary. Cluster bombs have been used, though they are illegal.
Anti-personnel fragmentation bombs have been fired in residential
areas. Bombs have hit streets, markets, and farms in circumstances
that do not always appear to be accidental.
Nicolas de Torrente, the executive director of Medicins Sans Frontieres
USA, today testified to the Security Council that "In Iraq...the
conflict is essentially being carried out in a vacuum. The political
agendas and military strategies of the warring parties have resulted
in nearly completely shutting out independent humanitarian assistance"
(see www.msf.org).
But all wars are disastrous for all people. It is not this war
but all wars, which are wrong. The idea that, in the face of humankind's
great problems, the solution is to send out young people to kill
one another, is outdated and ridiculous. In all wars, the majority
of casualties are civilians. Some suggest that, if Saddam was
killing people and now he is gone, the net result will be fewer
lives lost. But that comparison is meaningless. I cannot accept
that we can develop weapons that can be guided from space, fired
from ships offshore hundreds of miles away, and we couldn't, if
we thought about it, come up with more effective means of conflict
resolution.
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