Hundreds of residents who returned to this war-ravaged city Thursday found that the battle of Fallujah was not over.
More than six weeks after U.S. forces launched their offensive into the Sunni stronghold, there was fighting Thursday with insurgents who had infiltrated the tightly guarded city.
The sound of tank, artillery and machine-gun fire echoed through the mostly empty streets, and loud booms could be heard inside the city at nightfall. Early in the day, U.S. forces launched an air strike on an apartment building in the northern section of Fallujah after engaging in a gun battle with fighters.
Three U.S. Marines died in the area Thursday, but it was unclear whether they were killed inside the city.
Away from the fighting, the interim Iraqi government and U.S. Marines opened the city to the estimated 2,000 families from the Andalus district. Fewer than 1,000 people came. After standing in long lines to pass through the checkpoints, they found a city with ravaged housing, destroyed businesses, and water and electrical systems in tatters.
“I didn’t bring my family with me because I do not know if my house is still standing,” said Mahmoud Arafi, 41. “I don’t know if there is anything to take them to.”
U.S. Army psychological operations officers blared messages in Arabic on loudspeakers on behalf of the Iraqi government, welcoming residents back to Fallujah and acknowledging that the city was in ruins. The message also asked the residents to be patient.
Marine officials say they expect a greater number of people to flock to the city in coming days after word of Fallujah’s opening spreads during Friday prayers. Government officials have said they hope to allow all Fallujah residents back into the city within three weeks.
Many Fallujah residents who were not from the Andalus district showed up at the checkpoints staffed by Iraqi National Guard and police and pleaded to be allowed into the city. They were denied entry.
Feverish cleanup
Rasmiya Ibrahim, with her husband and two children in tow, told the guards that they had been living in a drafty old school for months, and the children were constantly sick and cold. She begged the guards to let her family return home. The guards said that they could not let her enter because she was not from Andalus. They gave her two quilts before telling her to leave the area.
“Fallujah was bad before the Americans came, but it was still better than now,” Ibrahim said. “The Americans made a very bad situation even worse.”
In the days leading up to the opening of the city, Marines worked feverishly to clean up. With Iraqi day laborers they paid $6 a day, Marines plowed through much of the rubble and standing water in Andalus before residents arrived.
As the city slowly opens, reconstruction will become more dangerous, said Marine Reserves Maj. Wade Weems.
“The other side of it is that more Iraqis will be able to get involved in getting this city back up and running,” Weems said. “It is a tradeoff.”
Many who live in Fallujah fear that the city’s decrepit appearance will stoke a greater resistance to American forces and the interim Iraqi government among the returnees.
Along a major road the Marines call Doctors Row, most of the physicians’ offices have been gutted by air strikes and mortars, and the pharmacies are caved walls and broken glass. Even the front portion of the health clinic Weems was working to salvage appeared beyond repair. A rotting corpse from last month’s fighting had lain in a back room until Wednesday, when someone finally picked it up.
The Marines have the city’s two main hospitals up and running, but doctors at Fallujah General Hospital, the city’s largest medical center, said that it is in short supply of many medicines and that they are almost out of rabies vaccines.
“Rabies is of particular concern as the people start coming back,” said Dr. Tameem al-Mousili, a physician at the hospital. “There are packs of dogs still roaming the city that have been eating from the dead bodies. . . . When these dogs bite the people, it will be a big problem.”
Many of those waiting in line to get into the city said they already knew the fate of their homes but wanted to see the damage.
Shrapnel fell `like raindrops’
Hameed Hussein Abbas al-Isawi, 50, said he left three days into the offensive as shrapnel from U.S. air strikes hit his home “like raindrops.” Neighbors who left after him told him that the home was badly damaged and Iraqi soldiers stole much of what he left behind.
Marine officers running the enormous reconstruction project say they are optimistic that the people of Fallujah will give them time to rebuild the city but they will have to act quickly to gain their trust.
At this point, the magnitude of the project is difficult for the Marines to grasp. Before the battle to retake Fallujah, the Iraqi government estimated the city needed $76 million in repairs.
In an interview last week, Col. John Ballard, commanding officer of the 4th Civil Affairs Group, which is overseeing the reconstruction, said it still is not known how much it will cost to rebuild the city.
Toward the end of a recent meeting with some of Fallujah’s religious leaders, Marine Capt. Brian Reynaldo bluntly said that he worried residents would quickly become frustrated with the slow rebuilding.
Reynaldo, who is on his second tour of duty in Iraq, asked the men to talk to their clerics and tribal leaders and encourage the city’s residents to support the reconstruction effort.
They told Reynaldo they would relay his concerns but they stopped short of assuring him that he would have the clerics’ support.
“We will advise the sheiks to be patient,” said one of the religious leaders, who did not want to be identified. “The rest is in God’s hands.”
