Urban War

The U.S. military says its operations are precise and it does not target civilians or women and children … An assessment by five international non-governmental organisations on Friday said 470 people had been killed in Falluja. Of 1,200 injured, it said 243 were women and 200 children. The groups said their estimate may be conservative. “Dead bodies are lying in the streets. Ambulances are being shot at by snipers. Medical aid and supplies have been stopped by U.S. occupation forces,” a statement from the NGOs said … Residents say the Marines shoot without concern for their targets. One doctor pointed to an ambulance outside the clinic whose windscreen and side was riddled with bullet holes. “We went close to Abdulaziz mosque and evacuated some wounded, when a sniper fired at us,” he said. “Our driver was killed and some of the wounded died.”

Because the resistance in Falluja is so intense, and to fight in accordance with their current dictums of casualty aversion and the avoidance of excessive urban destruction, the Marines in Falluja are avoiding engaging in house-to-house fighting and indiscriminate carpet bombing followed by advances along a front. This is the preferred Russian strategy for seizing urban centres, and one that they have executed repeatedly, most recently in Grozny. The Pentagon’s current aversion to this draconian strategy constrains its forces to transient airborne-assisted strikes and sniper and artillery seige tactics. This was tried before, most recently and most infamously in Sarajevo in the 1990s. The tragedy is that it is rarely sufficient to quickly overwhelm a city full of resistors, but it does create a persistent, enduring stream of hapless civilian casualties.