Shukria Mahmoud, age sixty-two, was two months pregnant when the United States launched a brutal, house-to-house assault on the central Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004 — a campaign against insurgent anti-occupation militants that left much of the city in ruins.
In the Second Battle of Fallujah that November, US forces, supported by a British battalion on the ground, bombarded the city for about six weeks. They used precision bombs, rockets, missiles, nearly one hundred thousand rounds of aircraft fire, and white phosphorus, killing hundreds of civilians.
Shukria was one of the few who escaped after the fighting began, slipping past street battles and coalition checkpoints that had sealed the city. She joined nearly the entire population of Fallujah — about three hundred thousand people — in fleeing the city, taking temporary refuge in a camp in Amiriyah, south of Fallujah.
Despite the hardship, she was overjoyed to learn she was expecting twins.
When the fighting eased, she returned to Fallujah with her family to rebuild and prepare for birth. But in labor, her joy turned to shock: instead of twins, she delivered one girl who appeared to have two heads.
The infant did not have a second head, but a fluid-filled sac that caused her skull to enlarge disproportionately — a condition known as hydrocephalus. It was one of many congenital defects that surged in Fallujah after the assault, widely blamed on toxic remnants of US weapons, including heavy metals and depleted uranium contaminating the city’s soil, water, and air.
“The doctors say that I likely got exposed to white phosphorus when I was trying to flee the city,” Shukria says. White phosphorus — a highly flammable chemical that inflicts severe and penetrating burns on contact with skin — was used by the United States…
Auteur: Jaclynn Ashly
