Return date uncertain for Fallujah residents. 21/11/2004. ABC News Online
It could be as late as February before hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who fled the US-led assault on Fallujah are allowed to return, US commanders warn.
”The bottom line is there is no firm date. It’s not a date-driven trigger,” said Major Francis Piccoli, a spokesman for the First Marine Expeditionary Force.
“If we have a concern, it would be civilians returning to the city and it not being safe for them.”
The blistering eight-day offensive levelled much of the city of 300,000, the majority of whom made a dramatic exodus ahead of the US military’s overwhelming display of force.
The fighting left the now-deserted city in shambles, littered with rubble, unexploded ordnance and corpses, and US and Iraqi forces are only now making small steps towards reconstruction.
But how long it will take to demolish unsound buildings, restore basic services, destroy unexploded ordnance and pull the bodies from the rubble is unknown.
This has stirred debate within the military on when civilians should be allowed back into the city.
Some military civil affairs officers argue that residents should be allowed to return after the US Thanksgiving holiday, which falls this Thursday.
But the Marine’s 3-5 battalion command told its staff that it might not be until February that basic services like water and electricity would be restored to the city, said 3-5 battalion spokesman Captain PJ Batty.
Preliminary battle damage assessments have started but workers have yet to begin clearing the chunks of concrete and dangling power lines strewn on the streets.
One marine officer said that in a three or four-block radius, as much as 50 per cent of the buildings might not be structurally sound and would have to be demolished.
So far, reconstruction efforts have been limited to volunteers from the neighbouring town of Saqlawiya pulling decomposing corpses from the streets.
Before the offensive started, the US military had more than $US80 million allotted for Fallujah’s reconstruction.
It could be as late as February before hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who fled the US-led assault on Fallujah are allowed to return, US commanders warn.
”The bottom line is there is no firm date. It’s not a date-driven trigger,” said Major Francis Piccoli, a spokesman for the First Marine Expeditionary Force.
“If we have a concern, it would be civilians returning to the city and it not being safe for them.”
The blistering eight-day offensive levelled much of the city of 300,000, the majority of whom made a dramatic exodus ahead of the US military’s overwhelming display of force.
The fighting left the now-deserted city in shambles, littered with rubble, unexploded ordnance and corpses, and US and Iraqi forces are only now making small steps towards reconstruction.
But how long it will take to demolish unsound buildings, restore basic services, destroy unexploded ordnance and pull the bodies from the rubble is unknown.
This has stirred debate within the military on when civilians should be allowed back into the city.
Some military civil affairs officers argue that residents should be allowed to return after the US Thanksgiving holiday, which falls this Thursday.
But the Marine’s 3-5 battalion command told its staff that it might not be until February that basic services like water and electricity would be restored to the city, said 3-5 battalion spokesman Captain PJ Batty.
Preliminary battle damage assessments have started but workers have yet to begin clearing the chunks of concrete and dangling power lines strewn on the streets.
One marine officer said that in a three or four-block radius, as much as 50 per cent of the buildings might not be structurally sound and would have to be demolished.
So far, reconstruction efforts have been limited to volunteers from the neighbouring town of Saqlawiya pulling decomposing corpses from the streets.
Before the offensive started, the US military had more than $US80 million allotted for Fallujah’s reconstruction.
Comments