First Red Cross Medical Delivery to Iraq's Fallujah in Months
The International Committee of the Red Cross has delivered medical supplies to Iraq's Fallujah for the first time since January, it said Thursday, describing the situation in the conflict-hit city as "extremely dire".
A five-member ICRC team visited the city, which has been outside of government control since the beginning of the year, and delivered the supplies to the city's main hospital, which it said would be used to treat patients suffering from burns or other injuries.
"The situation is very worrying," said Patricia Guiote, head of the Red Cross sub-delegation in Baghdad and the leader of the delegation that visited Fallujah, a short drive west of the Iraqi capital.
"People are enduring a severe shortage of food, water and health care. Services at the hospital, which is the only facility still able to provide treatment for the injured and the sick, have been seriously affected by the fighting."
The ICRC said the team delivering the supplies found "immense needs and a situation that is extremely dire."
"People in the city are living through a terrible ordeal."
Upwards of 350 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in months of conflict in Fallujah, according to Doctor Ahmed Shami at the city's hospital.
Anti-government fighters have held sway since early January, and government security forces have regularly shelled the city and mounted multiple offensives to try and re-take it.
The army says it is targeting militants with the shelling, but residents and human rights groups say civilians are bearing the brunt of the casualties.
Last month, Human Rights Watch said accounts "strongly indicate" that the Iraqi forces targeted Fallujah hospital, "which would constitute a serious violation of the laws of war."
The crisis in the desert province of Anbar, which borders Syria and of which Fallujah is a part, began in late December when security forces dismantled a longstanding protest camp maintained by the province's mainly Sunni Arab population to vent grievances against the government.
Militants subsequently seized parts of Ramadi, and all of Fallujah, the first time anti-government forces have exercised such open control in major cities since the peak of the deadly violence that followed the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.
They have since held all of Fallujah, and protracted battles have continued in Ramadi.
Source: Agence France Presse
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