Photo Essay — Fallujah: An Unnatural Disaster

Fallujah is completely surrounded by US Forces, the only way in or out is through one of four very restrictive checkpoints. People normally have to wait hours, but since we had our magic US passports, we made it through in about 45 minutes. We did not observe them actually searching any cars, soldiers just held-up traffic and slowly checked IDs. Like Palestine, these checkpoints seem to have had little to do with security and more to do with harassment and intimidation.

Fallujah is devastating to drive through.

There is more destruction and rubble than I’ve ever seen in my life;

even more than in Rafah, Gaza.

The US has leveled entire neighborhoods,

and about every third building is destroyed or damaged from US artillery.

Rubble and bullet holes are everywhere,

the city is indescribably ravaged.

It looks like it’s been hit by a series of tornados;

it’s hard to believe that humans could actually do this.

I have a new understanding of the destructive potential of modern warfare.

We visited a family’s home in a neighborhood where every structure is damaged or destroyed.

They said that they’d left during the fighting with their home in tact, and returned to find all of their possessions burned.

Read the entire report, Fallujah: An Unnatural Disaster

Read recent reports from Joe Carr

More Photo Essays

View Photo Essay — Fallujah: Faces of Fallujah

View Shia Muslims Join Sunni in Fallujah Cleanup

View more photos from Fallujah, March 2005

Further information about Fallujah and beyond

Focus on Fallujah: CPT Iraq’s current assessment of conditions 28 May 2005 — Electronic Iraq, 28 May 2005

Focus on reconstruction in Fallujah — IRIN, 24 May 2005

Al Qa’im crisis: Towards a new Fallujah? — Italian Consortium of Solidarity, 13 May 2005

Fallujah 101: A history lesson about the town we are currently destroying — In These Times, 12 November 2004

Articles & eye-witness’s accounts from inside Iraq — The Brussels Tribunal Articles Page (continually updated)

VIDEO

An exclusive Diario video of Falluja.

Women at a funeral inside Falluja (photo: Diario)

FALLUJA - THE DAY AFTER 1 June 2005
A video was recorded in Falluja in early Janury, 2005, when the city was reopened to civilians after the American attack of November 8th, 2004 (“Operation Al-Fajr”, i. e. “the dawn”).

It’s an important document since the city was closed to reporters at that moment. This video was handed over to the Italian weekly magazine Diario by the Studies Center of Human Rights and Democracy of Falluja. Diario issued a broad enquire on Falluja battle on May 27th, 2005.

“Falluja-The day After” shows the total devastation of the Iraqi town, the corpses of the victims, the mass graves, the exhumation of many corpses by local rescue teams in order to try to recognize some of the victims. The last corpse shown in this video belongs to a 14 year old girl.

The video lasts 18 minutes and 20 seconds.

View the video at Diario.it