Pratap Chatterjee / CorpWatch – 2004-04-29 08:00:24

http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2004/april/audio/dn20040428.ra&proto=rtsp&start=29:55.17

(Fast forward to about 6 min, 30 sec of the 29 min segment.)

Exerpts:

As televised worldwide, this is a very heavy assault with artillery, helicopter gunships, and heavily armed fixed wing aircraft spraying ground with cannon fire, but is not considered a full-scale attack.

Pratap Chatterjee, managing director of CorpWatch.org., just returned from an extended period in Iraq as one of the few independent reporters able to talk to Iraqis. He reports from the outskirts of Falluja on conversations with Iraqis leaving Falluja, often by ambulance for transport to hospitals in Baghdad.

In Baghdad, US forces are entering hospitals and taking the names of hospitalized patients from Falluja and arresting them, so now people are being taken out of hospitals to avoid arrest.

His cameraman in Falluja ,reports that during the “cease-fire” periods, US forces are firing at anyone who steps into the streets. The cameraman witnessed US attacks on a clearly-marked ambulance with sirens going, where Marines shot through the windshield at the driver, and then shot the wheels and engine out.

The military is also shutting down hospitals, in al Karama hospital in Baghdad, Chatterjee talk to a doctor from the main hospital in Najaf, in the south, that the military had shut down.

In every major place the military has attacked, the military has shut down the hospitals. There are make-shift clinics set up, whose patients are mainly women and children. Many people in these areas cannot get medical aid.

In Baghdad, mosques are full of bags of food to support people in both Sunni and Shiite areas under attack in an outpouring of support.

Situation of Hospitals in Baghdad in early April: see
http://wwww.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/0/3241550309cdbc7685256d0200595df0?OpenDocument

Tawnia Queen, International Publications Associate, People’s Health Movement Advocate (U.S. Regional Circle), 1919 Addison St. #304, Berkeley, CA. 94704
phm@hesperian.org

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