Iraqis Flee Fallujah Carnage, U.S. Troops Set to Storm

Report by Firas al-Atraqchi, YellowTimes.org
NewsFromtheFront.org

CAIRO (NFTF.org) -- Iraqi negotiators, who were trying to reach a lasting settlement with the U.S. military in the besieged city of Fallujah, told reporters in Baghdad that their protests of last night's intense shelling of the Golan district were met with silence. They claimed the U.S. negotiating team did not address any of the Iraqi grievances.

The U.S. military did not provide any comments.

Meanwhile, helicopter shelling of the Golan district - the train station, in particular - resumed at 2pm, Baghdad time, catching many of the city's residents by surprise since, they claim, no one has fired on U.S. forces in two days. The claim could not be independently confirmed.

Iraqi negotiators had said earlier that U.S. forces had cancelled an awaited patrol and told Fallujah's civic leaders that the patrols could resume on Thursday. U.S. forces, however, reported that one of their patrols came under sniper fire. Conflicting reports of cancelled patrols have not yet been confirmed.

The Al-Jazeera network, the only independent news service reporting from within Fallujah, quoted city residents who claimed that U.S. snipers were shooting at anything that moved. The residents said they were scared to remain indoors for fear of U.S. shelling.

Fallujah hospital staff said they could not reach the shelled areas and had no information about the dead and wounded.

Fallujah mosques were warning residents to brace themselves for a U.S. storming of the city and accused U.S. forces of betraying the ceasefire deals reached in the past week.

Fallujah police have said they handed over to U.S. forces a cache of heavy weapons surrendered by resistance fighters earlier in the week. The U.S. military denied the report.

In other parts of the country, angry demonstrators burned the proposed new flag and said they would never "sell our flag." In Mosul, several thousand high school and university students accused the Iraq Governing Council of betrayal. The new flag - a blue crescent fixed above two blue stripes and a yellow one in the middle - was rejected outright by many in Iraq. The yellow is said to represent the Kurdish minority; the color blue represents the two great rivers of Iraq - the Tigris and Euphrates. Middle East analysts have cast doubt that the flag will be accepted by Iraqis, citing that the only other regional flag with blue stripes, let alone the color blue, is Israel's. The flag was designed in Britain.

In related news, in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the Al Mezzeh district of Damascus, Syria, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad told Al-Jazeera in an exclusive interview that the Iraqi resistance is legitimate as it expresses the frustrations and aspirations of a majority of Iraqis.

The terrorist attacks targeted a U.N. civilian compound. Two assailants were said to have been killed by Syrian security and two were captured. The Syrian foreign ministry blamed "external forces" but did not provide further detail.

Syrian security forces said they had found a cache of arms after intense interrogations with the captured men. Syria did not reveal the identity or nationality of the captured men.

YellowTimes.org correspondent Firas al-Atraqchi drafted this report.