Umm Samir sits in a Baghdad garden in the shade of two palm trees, worrying about the sons and grandchildren she left behind in Fallujah.
On a balmy spring evening, with the smell of freshly mown grass around her, her present refuge with relatives seems a world away from the nightmare city she left.
"It was the bombing, the constant bombing, and the children being so afraid, and the journey across the open desert to escape," she said when asked what was the worst thing about the week under siege.
Hundreds of families have driven out of Fallujah over the last two days, taking advantage of the ceasefire the Americans offered.
Families in Baghdad have provided food and money at mosques to help them, and many have taken refugees in.
The stories they tell have a theme: how the Americans used to be good when they first arrived in Fallujah, how arrogance and insensitivity gradually alienated people, and how now, under the pressure of so many deaths, almost everyone supports the resistance, the mujahidin.
Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, the US army spokesman, talked Sunday about getting Fallujah "back under Iraqi control," as though it was in foreign hands.
He accused the insurgents of using the population as "human shields." But, as the refugees tell it, the resistance is home-grown and mushrooming all the time.
"The mujahidin are our sons. I would become a mujahid myself. I can't bear to see Fallujah being bombed and do nothing about it. Even my older sister wants to join them," said Umm Samir, who is 62.
She is proud that her four sons all have college degrees -- a doctor, a road engineer, an agronomist and a psychologist.
"After the war we were very happy they had removed Saddam Hussein from power.
"Then they started to behave disrespectfully. Armored cars drove on the pavement. They began treating Iraqis as though we were beneath their feet. My doctor son was studying in the Czech republic and came back via Syria two months ago. There were about 20 US checkpoints on the road. They flung his papers around and when he said he was a doctor and should not be shouted at, they just swore," she said.
Ali, 28, the psychologist, explains how part of the family escaped Fallujah, crammed into two cars with his parents, his two sisters-in-law, their young children and a niece. They planned to join a convoy crossing a bridge on a back road controlled by the US Marines on Friday. Neither Ali nor his married brothers came because the troops were not allowing men of military age to leave.
"There was a terrible incident. One man in an Opel drove his wife and children to the bridge so they could walk over. As he drove back to town, an American sniper killed him," he said.
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
Pulled from the mud as an infant after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and reunited with his parents following an emotional court battle, the boy once known as “Baby 81” is now a 20-year-old dreaming of higher education. Jayarasa Abilash’s story symbolized that of the families torn apart by one of the worst natural calamities in modern history, but it also offered hope. More than 35,000 people in Sri Lanka were killed, with others missing. The two-month-old was washed away by the tsunami in eastern Sri Lanka and found some distance from home by rescuers. At the hospital, he was
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
RSS