Fallujah’s Forever War
The battle for the Islamic State stronghold still rages, and civilians are bearing the brunt of the horrors of war.
BY JANE ARRAF
JUNE 24, 2016
FALLUJAH, Iraq – Khalil Mahmoud left Fallujah in the back of an ambulance after burying his daughters in the garden of the deserted city hospital.
“We tried to leave, but when we reached the market a rocket landed on us,” he tells me, his voice still edged with panic as he crouched next to his wounded 10-year-old son. “My wife and three daughters were blown apart.”
Mahmoud took their bodies to the Fallujah hospital after the attack on Thursday. But Islamic State staff had fled, and the hospital and the morgue were deserted. So he buried two of his daughters in the garden and took his wounded son home.
He starts to sob as he tells the story, covering his face with the sleeve of a grimy white robe. His son, burns visible on his face, is wrapped in a faded floral-print sheet and lies on a stretcher nearby. Traumatized women from Mahmoud’s extended family are crowded into the back of the ambulance.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/24/fallujahs-forever-war/
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