ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Another 11 people – including women and children – have been killed by random Iraqi airstrikes in the city of Fallujah, said a top health official of the key city that Baghdad is fighting to retake from the Islamic State group (ISIS, or Daesh in Arabic). “The random airstrikes carried out by the Iraqi air force against Daesh in the center of the city and the Heyaskari neighborhood west of Fallujah have killed 11 civilians, including women and children,” Ahmad Shami, head doctor at the main Fallujah Hospital, said Thursday. ISIS has been in control of Fallujah since January last year. This week Iraq’s hobbling army – in cooperation with tribal militias – launched an assault to retake the city. Physicians in the city say that months of air and artillery bombings by Iraqi forces have killed some 71 residents and wounded about 90 others – excluding the latest casualties. According to Shami, the wounded suffer grave injuries and the city is short of medicines, doctors and nurses. He has accused the Iraqi government, as well as local and international health and humanitarian organizations, of ignoring what is happening in Fallujah. The Iraqi government released a statement last week denying its airstrikes have ever targeted civilians inside Fallujah in the war against ISIS. According to reports received by Rudaw from the frontlines, the Iraqi forces have made little progress in efforts to retake the Sunni-majority city, roughly 69 kilometers west of Baghdad on the Euphrates River.
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