Report drops Fallujah bombshell

ROME: The controversy over the American use of white phosphorus as a weapon of war in Fallujah deepened yesterday when it was revealed that a US intelligence assessment had characterised WP as a "chemical weapon".

The Italian journalist who sparked the controversy, Sigfrido Ranucci, told a press conference in Rome that while a colleague was browsing American Defence Department websites he had stumbled on a declassified intelligence report from the first Gulf War.

The file was headed "Possible use of phosphorous chemical weapons by Iraq in Kurdish areas along the Iraqi-Turkish-Iranian borders".

The report was made in late February 1991 during the Iraqi crackdown on the Kurdish uprising that followed the coalition victory against Iraq.

"Iraqi forces loyal to President Saddam may have possibly used white phosphorous (WP) chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels and the populace in Erbil and Dohuk. "The WP chemical was delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunships."

The intelligence report added that "reports of possible WP chemical weapon attacks spread quickly among the populace in Erbil and Dohuk.

"As a result, hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled from these two areas across the border into Turkey".

Ranucci commented that "when Saddam used WP it was a chemical weapon but when the Americans use it, it's a conventional weapon. The injuries it inflicts, however, are just as terrible, however you describe it".

In the original RAI documentary, witnesses inside Fallujah during the November 2004 bombardment described the terror and excruciating agony suffered by victims of the shells fired by American artillery.

Two former US soldiers who fought at Fallujah told how they had been ordered to prepare to use the weapons.

The film and still photos posted on the website of the channel that made the film - rainews24.it - show the strange corpses discovered after the city's destruction.

Many of the skin on the bodies had apparently melted or caramelised so their features were indistinguishable.

Ranucci said he had seen "more than 100" of what he described as "anomalous corpses" in the city.

The US State Department and the Pentagon have shifted their position repeatedly in the aftermath of the film's showing.

After initially denying that US forces use WP as a weapon, the Pentagon said WP had been used against insurgents in Fallujah.

Military analysts said there remained questions about the official US position on its observance of the 1980 conventional weapons treaty which governs the use of WP as an incendiary weapon and sets prohibitions, such as its use on civilians.

Daryl Kimball, the director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, yesterday called for an independent investigation to scrutinise the US use of WP in Fallujah.

"If it was used as an incendiary weapon, clear restrictions apply," he said. "Given that the US and UK went into Iraq on the ground that Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people, we need to make sure that we are not violating the laws that we have subscribed to." Although WP is classified as a conventional not a chemical weapon, its effects are chemical as well as merely thermal. The choking white smoke it produces is highly toxic, and causes severe burns internally and externally to anyone caught in its path.

Yesterday a further wrinkle was added to the row when Adam Mynott, a BBC correspondent posted to Nassiriya during the invasion of Iraq in April 2003, told Rai News 24 that he had seen WP apparently used as a weapon against insurgents in that city.

- INDEPENDENT