Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre

*Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre*
Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre
Created by	Sigfrido Ranucci and Maurizio Torrealta
Country of origin	Italy
Original languages	Italian, English
Original release
Network	RAI
Release	8 November 2005

Last updated December 25, 2023

Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre is a documentary film by Sigfrido Ranucci and Maurizio Torrealta which first aired on Italy's RAI state television network on November 8, 2005. The film documents the use of chemical weapons, particularly the use of incendiary bombs containing white phosphorus, and alleges that insurgents and civilians, including children, had been killed or injured by chemical burns by military forces of the United States of America in the city of Fallujah in Iraq during the Fallujah Offensive of November 2004.

White phosphorus

White phosphorus (WP) is a chemical smoke-producing agent, reacting quickly and spontaneously with air and causing an instant bank of smoke. As a result, WP munitions are common, particularly as smoke grenades for infantry, loaded in defensive grenade dischargers on tanks and other armored vehicles, or as part of the ammunition allotment for artillery or mortars. These create smokescreens to mask movement from the enemy, or to mask his fire. WP burns fiercely and can set cloth, fuel, ammunition and other combustibles on fire, so it is also used as an incendiary weapon. WP use is legal for purposes such as illumination and obscuring smoke, and the Chemical Weapons Convention does not list WP in its schedules of chemical weapons.

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) gives the following information about white phosphorus.^[1] It "spontaneously catches fire in air". Handling requires the most severe level of safety equipment because it is classified as a level 4 hazard, the highest level. When WP comes in contact with skin, it reacts to become phosphoric acid, and continues burning until neutralized. WP causes severe second and third degree burns upon contact with skin or eyes. WP smoke also causes eye and respiratory tract irritation. It not only reacts with skin, but dissolves fat and tissues beneath the skin. When it was used for producing matches, inhalation of the vapors caused a condition known as phossy jaw, where the bones of workers dissolved in their faces.

War crimes

The primary theme of the film is its assertion of a case for war crimes committed by the United States in its military offensive against Fallujah in Iraq. The film documents the use of weapons based on white phosphorus and other substances similar to napalm, such as Mark 77 bomb, by American forces.

Interviews with American ex-military personnel who were involved in the Fallujah offensive testify to the use of the weapons by the United States, while reporters who were stationed in Iraq discuss the American government's attempts to suppress the news by covert means.

Incendiary weapons used against personnel and civilians

The film states that the use of napalm and similar agents was banned by the United Nations in 1980 for use against civilians and also for use against military targets in proximity to civilians.

The use of white phosphorus, as a marker, smokescreen layer or as a weapon, is not banned by Protocol III of the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. What is prohibited is the use of incendiary weapons against targets in close proximity to civilians or civilian property. The protocol specifically excludes weapons whose incendiary effect is secondary, such as smoke and tracer rounds. The United States is among the nations that are parties to the convention but did not sign Protocol III until 2009.^[2]^[3] In the 1990s, the U.S. government condemned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for allegedly using "white phosphorus chemical weapons" against Kurdish rebels and residents of Irbil and Dohuk.

The March–April 2005 online Field Artillery Archived 2005-11-25 at the Wayback Machine magazine has confirmed the use of WP (white phosphorus) in so-called "shake 'n bake" attacks: "WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with [high explosives (HE)]. We fired "shake and bake" missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out." [P.26]

Graphic visual footage of the WP weapons being fired from helicopters into urban areas is displayed, as well as detailed footage of the remains of those killed by these weapons, including children and women. The filmmakers interview US ex-military support Marine and antiwar activist Jeff Englehart of Colorado who discusses the American use of white phosphorus, nicknamed "Whiskey Pete" (pre-NATO US phonetic alphabet for "WP" - White Phosphorus) by U.S. servicemembers, in built-up areas, and describes the Fallujah offensive as "just a massive killing of Arabs."^[4]

Following pressure from former Labour MP Alice Mahon, the British Ministry of Defence confirmed the use of Mark 77 firebombs by US forces during the initial invasion of Iraq.^[5]

The Independent said that there were independent reports of civilians from Fallujah suffering burn injuries. One resident said that US forces used "weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud" and that he watched "pieces of these bombs explode into large fires that continued to burn on the skin even after people dumped water on the burns". Dahr Jamail, an unembedded reporter who collected the testimony of refugees from Fallujah, spoke to a doctor who had "treated people who had their skin melted".^[6]

Indiscriminate violence

The film alleges that Iraqi civilians, including women and children, had died of burns caused by white phosphorus during the Fallujah offensive as part of its campaign. Englehart described WP as being dispersed in a cloud that "kills indiscriminately" within a large area, "every human being or animal". Former US Army scout Garret Reppenhagen, also from Colorado, claimed that civilian deaths were common. He described an instance of killing civilians with "machine gun fire" as they were escaping in a car that was approaching him.

The US military responded by stating that they gave civilians several days of advance warning of the assault and urged them to evacuate the city. This was done through loudspeakers and leaflets dropped by helicopter. However, men of "fighting age" were stopped from leaving the city, numerous women and children also stayed behind, and a correspondent for the Guardian estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians were still in the city when the assault took place. "The marines treated Falluja as if its only inhabitants were fighters. They levelled thousands of buildings, illegally denied access to the Iraqi Red Crescent and, according to the UN's special rapporteur, used 'hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population'."^[7]

On November 16, 2005 the Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Venable said that "suggestions that U.S. forces targeted civilians with these weapons are simply wrong," but he had to admit to the Financial Times that "it would not be out of the realm of the possible" that civilians were also killed by the white phosphorus.^{[ citation needed ]}

Criticism

Critics of the film point out that white phosphorus is not considered a "chemical weapon" under the Chemical Weapons Convention but an incendiary weapon. Even though it has been used as rat poison, it primarily burns its subject. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) states that white phosphorus is still used by military powers around the world, even though it states:

Direct skin contact can lead to thermal burns and chemical burns. WP particles react with oxygen and can cause 2nd and 3rd degree thermal burns. The particles can also enter the body through the burns or other wounds and continue to damage tissues. Chemical burns result from several different compounds produced through WP reactions. These include phosphorus pentoxide which can react with the water in skin and produce corrosive phosphoric acids.^[2]

Crucially, [the US] statement that white phosphorus had been used as an incendiary was not an admission that a chemical or otherwise illegal weapon had been deployed. Still less was it evidence that a massacre of civilians had taken place in Falluja.
— Paul Wood (The BBC's defence correspondent) 17 November 2005^[8]

The media couldn't have made a bigger pig's ear of the white phosphorus story. So, before moving on to the new revelations from Falluja, I would like to try to clear up the old ones. There is no hard evidence that white phosphorus was used against civilians. The claim was made in a documentary broadcast on the Italian network RAI, called Falluja: the Hidden Massacre. It claimed that the corpses in the pictures it ran "showed strange injuries, some burnt to the bone, others with skin hanging from their flesh ... The faces have literally melted away, just like other parts of the body. The clothes are strangely intact." These assertions were supported by a human-rights advocate who, it said, possessed "a biology degree".
I, too, possess a biology degree, and I am as well qualified to determine someone's cause of death as I am to perform open-heart surgery. So I asked Chris Milroy, professor of forensic pathology at the University of Sheffield, to watch the film. He reported that "nothing indicates to me that the bodies have been burnt". They had turned black and lost their skin "through decomposition". We don't yet know how these people died. But there is hard evidence that white phosphorus was deployed as a weapon against combatants in Falluja. As this column revealed last Tuesday, US infantry officers confessed that they had used it to flush out insurgents.
...But buried in this hogwash is a grave revelation. An assault weapon the marines were using had been armed with warheads containing "about 35% thermobaric novel explosive (NE) and 65% standard high explosive". They deployed it "to cause the roof to collapse and crush the insurgents fortified inside interior rooms". It was used repeatedly: "The expenditure of explosives clearing houses was enormous."
The marines can scarcely deny that they know what these weapons do. An article published in the Gazette in 2000 details the effects of their use by the Russians in Grozny. Thermobaric, or "fuel-air" weapons, it says, form a cloud of volatile gases or finely powdered explosives. "This cloud is then ignited and the subsequent fireball sears the surrounding area while consuming the oxygen in this area. The lack of oxygen creates an enormous overpressure ... Personnel under the cloud are literally crushed to death. Outside the cloud area, the blast wave travels at some 3,000 metres per second ... As a result, a fuel-air explosive can have the effect of a tactical nuclear weapon without residual radiation ... Those personnel caught directly under the aerosol cloud will die from the flame or overpressure. For those on the periphery of the strike, the injuries can be severe. Burns, broken bones, contusions from flying debris and blindness may result. Further, the crushing injuries from the overpressure can create air embolism within blood vessels, concussions, multiple internal haemorrhages in the liver and spleen, collapsed lungs, rupture of the eardrums and displacement of the eyes from their sockets." It is hard to see how you could use these weapons in Falluja without killing civilians.
"This looks to me like a convincing explanation of the damage done to Falluja, a city in which between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians might have been taking refuge. It could also explain the civilian casualties shown in the film. So the question has now widened: is there any crime the coalition forces have not committed in Iraq?"
— George Monbiot in The Guardian November 22, 2005^[7]

These repeated statements that WP was not used against civilians are misleading. The WP shells were fired into the air over the city of Fallujah. With no way to aim or guide the chemicals to a specific target, videos and photographs show the sky above Fallujah filled with exploding white fire which rained down on everything and everyone who happened to be beneath it, despite the US military's own knowledge that a minimum of 30,000 civilians, men, women, and children, were still in the city.

In 2012 a study, released by the Switzerland-based International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, showed that in the years following Operation Phantom Fury there had been a 4-fold increase in all cancers, including a 12-fold increases in childhood cancer in those aged 0–14.^[9] Nadim al-Hadid, spokesperson of Falluja Hospital declared: "In 2004 the Americans tested all kinds of chemicals and explosive devices on us: thermobaric weapons, white phosphorus, depleted uranium... we have all been laboratory mice for them".^[10]

Related Research Articles

A Molotov cocktail is a hand-thrown incendiary weapon consisting of a frangible container filled with flammable substances and equipped with a fuse. In use, the fuse attached to the container is lit and the weapon is thrown, shattering on impact. This ignites the flammable substances contained in the bottle and spreads flames as the fuel burns.

Napalm is an incendiary mixture of a gelling agent and a volatile petrochemical. The name is a portmanteau of two of the constituents of the original thickening and gelling agents: coprecipitated aluminium salts of naphthenic acid and palmitic acid. A team led by chemist Louis Fieser originally developed napalm for the US Chemical Warfare Service in 1942 in a secret laboratory at Harvard University. Of immediate first interest was its viability as an incendiary device to be used in fire bombing campaigns during World War II; its potential to be coherently projected into a solid stream that would carry for distance resulted in widespread adoption in infantry flamethrowers as well.

A thermobaric weapon, also called an aerosol bomb, or a vacuum bomb, is a type of explosive munitions that work by dispersing an aerosol cloud of gas, liquid or powdered explosive. Thermobaric weapons are almost 100% fuel and as a result are significantly more energetic than conventional explosives of equal weight. The fuel is often elemental. Many types of thermobaric weapons can be fitted to hand-held launchers, and can also be launched from airplanes.

Incendiary weapons, incendiary devices, incendiary munitions, or incendiary bombs are weapons designed to start fires or destroy sensitive equipment using fire, using materials such as napalm, thermite, magnesium powder, chlorine trifluoride, or white phosphorus. Though colloquially often known as bombs, they are not explosives but in fact are designed to slow the process of chemical reactions and use ignition rather than detonation to start or maintain the reaction. Napalm, for example, is petroleum especially thickened with certain chemicals into a 'gel' to slow, but not stop, combustion, releasing energy over a longer time than an explosive device. In the case of napalm, the gel adheres to surfaces and resists suppression.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fallujah</span> City in Al Anbar, Iraq

Fallujah is a city in Al Anbar Governorate, Iraq. Situated on the Euphrates River, it is located roughly 69 kilometres (43 mi) to the west of the capital city of Baghdad. The city dates back to the Babylonian era and was host to important Jewish academies for many centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First Battle of Fallujah</span> Operation of the Iraq War

The First Battle of Fallujah, code-named Operation Vigilant Resolve, was an operation against militants in Fallujah as well as an attempt to apprehend or kill the perpetrators of the killing of four U.S. contractors in March 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2003–2006 phase of the Iraqi insurgency</span> Part of the Iraq War

After the invasion of Iraq was completed and the regime of Saddam Hussein was toppled in May 2003, the Iraqi insurgency began. The 2003–2006 phase of the Iraqi insurgency lasted until early 2006, when it escalated from an insurgency to a civil war, which became the most violent phase of the Iraq War.

A smoke screen is smoke released to mask the movement or location of military units such as infantry, tanks, aircraft, or ships.

The Second Battle of Fallujah, initially codenamed Operation Phantom Fury,Operation al-Fajr was an American-led offensive of the Iraq War that lasted roughly six weeks, starting 7 November 2004. Marking the highest point of the conflict against the Iraqi insurgency, it was a joint military effort carried out by the United States, the Iraqi Interim Government, and the United Kingdom. Within the city of Fallujah, the coalition was led by the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army, the battle was later described as "some of the heaviest urban combat U.S. military have been involved in since the Battle of Huế City in Vietnam in 1968".

The Mark 77 bomb (MK-77) is a United States 750-pound (340 kg) air-dropped incendiary bomb carrying 110 U.S. gallons of a fuel gel mix which is the direct successor to napalm.

The RPO-A Shmel' is a man-portable, single-use, rocket-assisted thermobaric weapon. Despite the literal translation referring to the weapon as a flamethrower, it does not produce a jet of burning liquid - it is in fact an unguided rocket launcher that fires rounds that explode into a cloud of very hot gases.

White phosphorus munitions are weapons that use one of the common allotropes of the chemical element phosphorus. White phosphorus is used in smoke, illumination, and incendiary munitions, and is commonly the burning element of tracer ammunition. Other common names for white phosphorus munitions include WP and the slang terms Willie Pete and Willie Peter, which are derived from William Peter, the World War II phonetic alphabet rendering of the letters WP. White phosphorus is pyrophoric ; burns fiercely; and can ignite cloth, fuel, ammunition, and other combustibles.

The United States bombardment of Fallujah began in April 2003, one month after the beginning of the invasion of Iraq. In April 2003 United States forces fired on a group of demonstrators who were protesting against the US presence. US forces alleged they were fired at first, but Human Rights Watch, who visited the site of the protests, concluded that physical evidence did not corroborate US allegations and confirmed the residents' accusations that the US forces fired indiscriminately at the crowd with no provocation. 17 people were killed and 70 were wounded. In a later incident, US soldiers fired on protesters again; Fallujah's mayor, Taha Bedaiwi al-Alwani, said that two people were killed and 14 wounded. Iraqi insurgents were able to claim the city a year later, before they were ousted by a siege and two assaults by US forces. These events caused widespread destruction and a humanitarian crisis in the city and surrounding areas. As of 2004, the city was largely ruined, with 60% of buildings damaged or destroyed, and the population at 30%–50% of pre-war levels.

Chlorine bombings in Iraq began as early as October 2004, when insurgents in Al Anbar province started using chlorine gas in conjunction with conventional vehicle-borne explosive devices.

Al-Karmah, also sometimes transliterated as Karma, Karmah, or Garma, is a city in central Iraq, 16 km (10 mi) northeast of Fallujah in the province of Al Anbar.

Incendiary ammunition is a type of ammunition that contains a chemical that, upon hitting a hard obstacle, has the characteristic of causing fire/setting flammable materials in the vicinity of the impact on fire.

The Anbar campaign consisted of fighting between the United States military, together with Iraqi security forces, and Sunni insurgents in the western Iraqi governorate of Al Anbar. The Iraq War lasted from 2003 to 2011, but the majority of the fighting and counterinsurgency campaign in Anbar took place between April 2004 and September 2007. Although the fighting initially featured heavy urban warfare primarily between insurgents and U.S. Marines, insurgents in later years focused on ambushing the American and Iraqi security forces with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), large scale attacks on combat outposts, and car bombings. Almost 9,000 Iraqis and 1,335 Americans were killed in the campaign, many in the Euphrates River Valley and the Sunni Triangle around the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

A barrel bomb is an improvised unguided bomb, sometimes described as a flying IED. They are typically made from a large barrel-shaped metal container that has been filled with high explosives, possibly shrapnel, oil or chemicals as well, and then dropped from a helicopter or aeroplane. Due to the large amount of explosives, their poor accuracy, and indiscriminate use in populated civilian areas, the resulting detonations have been devastating. Critics have characterised them as weapons of terror and illegal under international conventions.

The Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the use of Incendiary Weapons is a United Nations treaty that restricts the use of incendiary weapons. It is Protocol III to the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed To Be Excessively Injurious Or To Have Indiscriminate Effects. Concluded in 1981, it entered into force on 2 December 1983. As of January 2023, it had been ratified by 126 state parties.

The most significant using of incendiary weapons were used a number of times during the Russo-Ukrainian War. Russians were accused of using white phosphorus bombs multiple times; in the Battle of Kyiv and against Kramatorsk in March 2022, against dug-in defenders at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol in May 2022, and in Marinka over the 2022 Christmas holiday. White phosphorus is a toxic chemical, and exposure to vapors leads to long-term ailments of the body, up to permanent disfigurement and death through organ failure.

References

↑ "White Phosphorus: Systemic Agent". cdc.gov. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved 2 December 2022.
1 2 White Phosphorus Fact Sheet, Federation of American Scientists
↑ "UNODA Treaties". treaties.unoda.org. Retrieved 20 July 2023.
↑ Buncombe, Andrew; Solomon Hughes (15 November 2005). "The fog of war: white phosphorus, Fallujah and some burning questions". The Independent. Archived from the original on 3 May 2008. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
↑ Ingram, Adam. "D/MSU/4/5/2". UK Ministry of Defense. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
↑ Buncombe, Andrew; Hughes, Solomon (15 November 2005). "The fog of war: white phosphorus, Fallujah and some burning questions". The Independent. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
1 2 Monbiot, George (22 November 2005). "Behind the phosphorus clouds are war crimes within war crimes". guardian.co.uk. The Guardian. Retrieved 2 December 2022.
↑ Staff. Heated debate over white phosphorus BBC NewsWatch 17 November 2005.
↑ Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009, Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan, Entesar Ariabi, Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2010, 7(7), 2828-2837; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph7072828
↑ Kelley, Michael B (18 April 2012). "The US Poured So Many Toxic Weapons On Fallujah In 2004 That Residents Still Pay The Price". businessinsider.com. Business Insider. Retrieved 3 December 2022.

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