May 3, 2004
Falluja Turns Out to Bury Dead After U.S. Pullback
Reuters

Victory, proclaimed by the people of Falluja when the American Marines who besieged and bombed them withdrew, often carries its own loss. With the fighting in the city mostly over, they are now free to bury their dead.

By Joseph Logan

FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - Victory, proclaimed by the people of Falluja when the American Marines who besieged and bombed them withdrew, often carries its own loss.

With the fighting in the city mostly over, they are now free to bury their dead.

At a soccer stadium Monday, Iraqi youths dug trenches where they laid bodies freshly pulled from rubble in neighborhoods held by the Marines until a few days ago. The Marines have now pulled back to let an Iraqi force take over.

As plumes of dust and a fetid odor rose from the field, workers planted gravestones -- two and three to a grave, in the case of families -- marking the cost of a month of siege.

"I thank God for letting us stand up to the Americans, but it is also bitter," said Hamid Eisawy, whose daughter was among those killed in Golan neighborhood -- pounded by U.S. bombers last week. Residents were unable to retrieve the bodies until now.

The leader of a team of gravediggers, his clothes and beard caked with mud, said the newest graves had been dug in the last two days, after U.S. forces pulled back to the edges of the city.

"We started digging over there almost a month ago, when they were hitting with planes, and the water was cut and there was no food or medicine coming," said Khayri al-Rawi, pointing to a second field filled with rows of graves and dotted with headstones.

By afternoon, about 20 bodies, including the unidentified, whose graves were simply marked "Martyr," had been buried.

"These are all from today, and more are coming," he said.

"PROSTITUTES" AND "SPIES"

The U.S. forces who launched an onslaught on Falluja after the killing and mutilation of four American contractors at the end of March have turned first to one then another former general in Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s army in hopes of ending the insurgency in the city.

Stores were open and traffic flowed in the center of the city, as police and members of the Iraqi force to which Marines have ceded some control stood at traffic circles.

Just across town, cars identified as guerrilla patrols nudged through streets pocked with shell craters. In the Golan quarter, Marines were still dug in at the train station, a few hundred yards from the twisted frames of cars and ruined buildings hit by U.S. shells.

Rage at the American occupiers took hold in the city not long after the ousting of Saddam, who enjoyed considerable loyalty in his Sunni Muslim heartlands west and north of Baghdad. U.S. forces killed 17 demonstrators and wounded dozens in Falluja less than three weeks after taking the capital.

The killings appear to have set a pattern for the relationship between American troops and residents of the city, where sympathy for insurgents is high.

"Before the massacre, I told people in the mosque that the Americans were passing through and that we were staying, and that they should not attack their vehicles," said Sheikh Jamal Shakir Nazzal, a local religious leader freed last week after a year in U.S. detention for suspected ties to insurgents.

He said his release came as U.S. envoys outlined their plan for backing away from confrontation with the city.

But he was skeptical of the U.S. policy in Falluja: "I told them that they are using people who are agents, traitors, prostitutes bought with dollars," he said.

Others echoed that view, suggesting that if U.S. forces expect local proxies to put an end to the insurgency, they are badly mistaken.

Gravediggers at the soccer stadium showed visitors a trench at the fringe of the field marked by a heap of newly turned, rancid-smelling earth and a stone block reading "Spies."

"These were seven who we caught spotting for the Americans and killed," said one youth who identified himself as Jassem.

Others trooped past the grave and spat on it.

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