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The US military and the Iraqi interim government had earlier refused permission for the aid lorries to enter Falluja.
But permission was granted on Saturday afternoon, Red Crescent spokeswoman Fardous al-Ubaidi said.
The main hospital is cut off from the rest of the city and doctors are said to be treating the injured with nothing but bandages, if they can reach them at all.
But on Channel 4 news 5 minutes ago they had a spokeswoman for the Red Crescent saying that now they've got the convoy to Fallujah the US forces are refusing to let them distribute it. She says they don't know how many killed and injured civilians there are, but they know there are at least 150 families inside.
Vincent wrote:Why do you entitle your thread, "US Refuses to Allow Red Crescent to Deliver Aid" when the article clearly states the opposite?
Don't you think it detracts from anything you may have to say of value, when you have such a clear agenda and exhibit such a consistent lack of fairness? You really are practicing yellow journalism at it's best.
SRR wrote:Still, Penta might have read the article better - perhaps it was due to the aid worker's own safety they were denied access for a little while?
Vincent wrote:Not only that, but the part that you quote is not even in the BBC article. It is only Penta's personal comments.
The sentence begining "But five minutes ago" was not even part of the BBC article. It is simply reporting from the front or rather in front - of Penta's television.
SRR wrote:Here's a suggestion for Penta: how about pasting the -full- article instead of simply small paragraphs that might support your skewed agenda?
The first aid convoy has arrived, amid fears of a humanitarian crisis.
But a relief agency spokeswoman told the BBC that US forces had refused to let them distribute the supplies.
Fardous al-Ubaidi, from the Iraqi Red Crescent, said five lorries and three ambulances had driven to the city's hospital carrying food and medicine, but were told to go no further.
The hospital remains cut off from the main part of the city, where the aid agency reports that civilians are hiding in their houses, without drinking water and running low on food.
"Our situation is very hard," one resident in the centre of the city told Reuters news agency by telephone.
"We don't have food or water. My seven children all have severe diarrhoea. One of my sons was wounded by shrapnel last night and he's bleeding, but I can't do anything to help him."
The man, Abu Mustafa, said he had seen US and Iraqi soldiers in his street as explosions rang out.
"There were bodies lying in the street," he said.
Abu Mustafa said he knew of six families nearby in a similar plight, before breaking down in tears.
"We are still fasting, though it is the Eid [end of Ramadan feast] today," he said.
The Iraqi health ministry said on Sunday that it had sent blood and medical supplies to the hospital.
An American military spokesman said the distribution of relief supplies had been prevented for security reasons.
Penta wrote: One might add that in April, it was US snipers, not Iraqis, shooting ambulance drivers, as reported in eye-witness testimony by Western aid workers, but you probably wouldn't want to believe that.
The doctor rushes out to meet me: “Can you go to fetch a lady? She is pregnant and she is delivering the baby soon.”
Azzam is driving, Ahmed in the middle directing him and me by the window, the visible foreigner, the passport. Something scatters across my hand, simultaneous with the crashing of a bullet through the ambulance, some plastic part dislodged, flying through the window.
We stop, turn off the siren, keep the blue light flashing, wait, eyes on the silhouettes of men in US marine uniforms on the corners of the buildings. Several shots come. We duck, get as low as possible and I can see tiny red lights whipping past the window, past my head. Some, it’s hard to tell, are hitting the ambulance. I start singing. What else do you do when someone’s shooting at you? A tyre bursts with an enormous noise and a jerk of the vehicle.
I am outraged. We are trying to get to a woman who is giving birth without any medical attention, without electricity, in a city under siege, in a clearly marked ambulance, and you are shooting at us. How dare you?
How dare you?
Azzam grabs the gear stick and gets the ambulance into reverse, another tyre bursting as we go over the ridge in the centre of the road, the shots still coming as we flee around the corner. I carry on singing. The wheels are scraping, burst rubber burning on the road.
The men run for a stretcher as we arrive and I shake my head. They spot the new bullet holes and run to see if we are OK. “Is there any other way to get to her,” I want to know. “La, maaku tareeq.” There is no other way.
They say we did the right thing. They say they have fixed the ambulance four times already and they will fix it again but the radiator is gone and the wheels are buckled and the woman is still at home in the dark giving birth alone. I let her down.
We can’t go out again. For one thing there is no ambulance and besides it’s dark now and that means our foreign faces can’t protect the people who go out with us or the people we pick up.
We load the ambulance with disinfectant, needles, bandages, food and water and set off, equipped this time with loudspeakers, pull up to a street corner and get out. The hospital is to the right, quite a way off; the marines are to the left. Four of us in blue paper smocks walk out, hands up, calling out that we’re a relief team, trying to deliver supplies to the hospital.
There’s no response and we walk slowly towards the hospital. We need the ambulance with us because there’s more stuff than we can carry, so we call out that we’re going to bring an ambulance with us, that we’ll walk and the ambulance will follow. The nose of the ambulance edges out into the street, shiny and new, brought in to replace the ones destroyed by sniper fire.
Shots rip down the street, two bangs and a zipping noise uncomfortably close. The ambulance springs back into the side road like it’s on a piece of elastic and we dart into the yard of the corner house, out through the side gate so we’re back beside the vehicle.
This time we walk away from the hospital towards the marines, just us and the loudspeaker, no ambulance, to try and talk to them properly. Slowly, slowly, we take steps, shouting that we’re unarmed, that we’re a relief team, that we’re trying to get supplies to the hospital.
Another two shots dissuade us. I’m furious. From behind the wall I inform them that their actions are in breach of the Geneva Conventions. “How would you feel if it was your sister in that hospital unable to get treated because some man with a gun wouldn’t let the medical supplies through.” David takes me away as I’m about to call down a plague of warts on their trigger fingers.
As soon as we arrive the hospital staff tell us that there is a pregnant woman in premature labor that needs to come to the hospital. So we are off again, to another part of town. This time there is no warning from the driver. Only a rifle crack as American snipers open fire on our ambulance.
Riding in the back, I can see the flash of the gun as bullets pierce the walls of the vehicle above our heads. Thank God I am on the floor. Another shooter blows out our headlights, and I hear the Brit, who is in the front seat, scream as pieces of engine spray into the cabin. Then they take out our front tires. It is madness, we are in a clearly marked ambulance, with a flashing, noisy siren, and they are shooting at us. Another bullet rips into the engine as the driver throws the vehicle into reverse. We hit a curb doing about ninety miles an hour, which takes out the rear tires. We screech back to the hospital on rims alone.
That’s the last trip for that night, as the ambulance is, for the moment, beyond repair.
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