IRAQ: US military chiefs said yesterday that they saw no need for the Iraqi Red Crescent to deliver aid inside Falluja because they did not think any Iraqi civilians were trapped there. Rory McCarthy reports from Baghdad
"There is no need to bring [ Red Crescent] supplies in because we have supplies of our own for the people," said Col Mike Shupp.
He said casualties could now be brought out over the reopened bridge and treated at Falluja's hospital, adding that he had not heard of any civilians trapped inside the city.
The Red Crescent believes at least 150 families are trapped, with many people in desperate need of food, blankets, water and medicine.
Some residents still inside the city, contacted by Reuters yesterday, said their children were suffering from diarrhoea and had not eaten for days.
Asked what he would do about the families and other non-combatants in the city, Col Shupp said: "I haven't heard that myself and the Iraqi soldiers didn't tell me about that. We want to help them as much as we can. We are on the radio telling them how to come out and how to come up to coalition forces."
Red Crescent trucks and ambulances were stopped at Falluja's main hospital, out of the city.
There is almost no one at the hospital for doctors to treat because most residents were too scared to leave their homes amid the fighting.
The Red Crescent has said the only way it can help is to go into the city.
Although US commanders believed the second attack on Falluja in eight months would stamp out the insurgency centred in the city, many residents believe the rebellion is spreading steadily nationwide.
Much of Falluja has been destroyed and hundreds of thousands of residents are refugees but the attack seems only to have deepened the city's anger and ostracised much of the Sunni minority.
One Sunni Muslim cleric, an aide to Abdullah Janabi, the wanted head of the "mojahedin council" that ran Falluja until the US assault, said the guerrilla rebellion would intensify.
"Maybe the Americans will come into Falluja," said the cleric, who asked not to be named. "Maybe they will take it. But it is not the end. There are 18 provinces in Iraq and the resistance will continue to grow tougher."
It is not a view the Iraqi government wants people to hear. It warned journalists last week to endorse the position that the operation has been an overwhelming success or face legal action.