Aid agencies ready for Fallujah

Aid agencies are watching to see if recent fighting in the central Iraqi city of Fallujah, which left at least 12 dead and more than 60 wounded in the last few days, will require their help, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said. Fighting on Saturday killed 12 and wounded 39 others, according to Coalition reports. Over the past few days, fighters and US troops have engaged in skirmishes as US troops raided and bombed suspected terrorist sites. The city’s hospital main hospital received several wounded people, Ahmed Khalid al-Rawi, an ICRC spokesman in Baghdad, told IRIN. Messages broadcast from mosques during sporadic fighting called on doctors to go to the hospitals to help out, al-Rawi said. “As far as I know, there is some escalation in the fighting between fighters and US forces,” al-Rawi said. “If there are some urgent needs, we can intervene.” Islamic Relief, a British-based aid agency building a park and cleaning the streets in Fallujah stopped work for several days but is now in the city about 60 km west of Baghdad to assess the situation, operations manager Mohammed Makki Fathi told IRIN. Islamic Relief is working with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on the US $140,000 project. “We stopped for a few days because the situation wasn’t good,” Fathi said. “We’re waiting to see how things are now.” Fallujah is seen as a home to insurgents loyal to former president Saddam Hussein and foreign fighters affiliated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Fighting in April left more than 1,000 Iraqis and more than 100 US troops dead before a truce was finally declared, according to international media reports. At that time aid agencies estimated that 100,000 people fled the fighting, which started when US forces searched for assailants responsible for killing four contractors whose bodies were mutilated and hung from a bridge over the Tigris early in April. It’s too early to talk about whether a temporary camp needs to be set up again for Fallujah residents fleeing fighting this time, al-Rawi said. “This depends on the situation. We hope we won’t need a camp,” al-Rawi said. Islamic Relief is one of the few international aid agencies working in Fallujah because of the perceived danger of kidnapping and terrorist activities there. Most international journalists have been advised not to go to Fallujah following an incident in which four TV journalists were kidnapped a month ago. During the April fighting’s most intense period, more than 10 trucks per day took clean water, bread, cooking gas and food and hygiene items into the city. Medical supplies also were taken through military checkpoints. The United Nations flew in blood donations from the neighbouring city of Amman, Jordan. Italian Red Cross workers trucked an estimated 1,000 litres of distilled water to the al-Hadhra refugee camp, according to officials. The international Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) NGO and the US-based Middle East Church Council also brought food, water and medical supplies to families, said Mohammed Ibrahim, deputy director of the Iraqi Red Crescent. In addition, mosques in the area coordinated by the Muslim Association of Scholars and other religious leaders gathered supplies, including blankets and clothing.