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LONDON, April 22: Iraqi fatalities in Falluja were higher than they might have been because of the US military occupation of the besieged town's main hospital, an international medical aid official said on Thursday.
"If this hospital was working it would have saved a lot of lives," Medecins Sans Frontieres' Emergency Coordinator for Iraq Ibrahim Younis told reporters in London. Local doctors had to treat casualties in two makeshift operating theatres inside the battle-scared town after US Marines occupied the outlying 300-bed Falluja Public Hospital at the start of the siege, Mr Younis said.
He travelled to Falluja a week after the start of the military assault on the town, launched on April 5. During a stay limited to a few hours by the dangers of the conflict, Mr Younis inspected the makeshift operating theatres at the town's Al Jamhoria medical centre.
"There was a lack of oxygen, lack of ventilators, lack of suction machines. The lighting was very poor. The hygiene was not good, there was a lot of blood around, with the minimum of equipment." Local doctors say more than 600 Iraqis have died in the fighting at Falluja.
Arms Hand Over: A US general warned guerillas in Falluja on Thursday they had "days not weeks" to hand over their arms or face the possibility of a renewed US offensive on the Iraqi town west of Baghdad.
Lt Gen James Conway, commander of the First Marine Expeditionary Force based in western Iraq, said the response to an agreement between US forces and civic leaders had been disappointing. Under the agreement, marines agreed to stop offensive operations in Falluja if guerillas handed over heavy weapons.
"We are not pleased at all with the turnover that we saw yesterday. The volume probably amounted to a pick-up truck full," he told reporters at Camp Falluja, a US base. -Reuters
