![]() “The shoe lay in a rubble-strewn yard amid the mustard yellow debris of a partially destroyed single-story home in a poor part of the city. She recalled seeing a red shoe smaller than her hand, adorned with a pink ribbon and bow: Fallujans’ accounts of the violence then sound eerily similar to their descriptions now.ĬNN correspondent Arwa Damon covered the Marine offensive in Falluja in 2004 and, on the 10th anniversary of the war, reflected on what she had experienced. Then, as now, about 50,000 people remained trapped in the city. There was no electricity, water or sewage disposal. More than half of Falluja’s 39,000 homes were damaged. PATRICK BAZ/AFP/Getty ImagesĪt its end, more than 80 Americans and thousands of Iraqis were dead. journalists embedded with Marine units gave terrifying accounts of the hunt for insurgents: navigating dark maze-like lanes laden with explosives and snipers, jumping from roof to roof, blasting through doors and windows and pounding the city with artillery shells.įalluja was pulverized by more than 300 bombs and 6,000 rounds of artillery during the six weeks of battle.ĭuring the second battle of Falluja in November 2004, a Marine writes a message on the bridge over the Euphrates where the charred bodies of American contractors were hung. legend alongside Iwo Jima in World War II and Hue in Vietnam. The second, Operation Phantom Fury, became the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War, securing its place in Marine Corps. military launched two major offensives on the city in 2004. ![]() The images elicited shock and outrage from the American public and changed the course of the war. One man held a sign that said: “Falluja is the cemetery for Americans.” Their bodies were mutilated and burned and two were hung from the steel girders of a bridge over the Euphrates. The men, employees of the former Blackwater security firm, were ambushed and killed by an angry Iraqi mob. soldiers fired on a demonstration against their presence and killed 17 people.įrom the very start of the Iraq War, Falluja was a bastion of Sunni dissent that would give rise to a violent insurgency, the birth of al Qaeda in Iraq and now the Islamic State.įalluja’s watershed moments came in 2004, when four American contractors were killed in chilling fashion. Local resentment of foreign forces was evident from the day soldiers of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division arrived in Falluja in late April 2003. Many Fallujans lost their jobs after the United States took control, disbanded the Iraqi army and sacked Baath Party members from civic institutions. Falluja had been as loyal to Hussein perhaps as the toppled leader’s hometown of Tikrit. The drive to Baghdad took me through Anbar province, heavily Sunni and tribal territory. And that in the fourth week of the 1991 Gulf War, a British Tornado airplane mistakenly bombed a market, killing 130 civilians and sparking local anger. I knew little about Falluja then: only that it was as ancient as Babylon and was the most populated city in Anbar province. It was from that road that I first saw Falluja in 2003, days after the invasion of Iraq began. Under Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein, Falluja had grown into a sizable city of 300,000 and gained importance for its strategic location, just 40 miles west of Baghdad and on the road to Jordan and Syria. Decades later, Dhari’s grandson ascended to prominence as a Sunni cleric and a vocal opponent of U.S. History books tell the tale of Falluja’s Sheikh Dhari who brazenly killed a senior British officer and sparked an uprising against colonial rule. Long before the Americans came, the people of Falluja stood up against the British, who invaded and occupied Iraq during World War I. A British plane mistakenly bombed a market in Falluja during the Gulf War in 1991.
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