"US and Iraqi forces are still besieging Tal Afar amid ongoing intensive bombing, ordering residents of Hassan Kawi and Sarray neighborhoods to evacuate immediately," a Tal Afar tribal leader told IOL over the phone Thursday, September 8.

"The Americans are seemingly bombing the city with chemical weapons," he said, adding Tal Afar residents are speaking of suffocations and other health problems upon exposure to any hit area.

Residents told IOL over the phone that they saw an ambulance driver trying to evacuate 10 corpses on a Hassan Kawi street. When he tried to move them to the morgue, US forces refused and ordered him to speed away.

US and Iraqi troops have been besieging the city since Saturday, September 3, and were reportedly gearing up for a large-scale offensive.

Evacuation

Even escaping is not a safe option.

In a press conference Wednesday, September 7, Major General Mohammed Ahmed Khalaf Jaboury, Police Chief of Nynwa Province – of which Tal Afar is a major city – said security forces question evacuees running out of the city and any 18-year-old or above male fails to answer any question is detained.

"We ordered the families to evacuate the Sunni neighbourhood of Saray, which is believed to be the main stronghold of the insurgents," Jaboury added.

Residents are forced to evacuate the city whether onboard US helicopters or using their own cars. Those who try to get out on their own have to pass through checkpoints set and manned by the Shiite Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq {SCIRI) 's Badr militia.

Reporting stealing their possessions and other abuses by the Shiite militia, most remaining residents are forced to board US helicopters.

Those who are still in the city are gathering up in one of two refugee camps set up on the suburbs of Tal Afar, where they face serious shortages of clean water, food and medicine.

The Fresh US and Iraqi offensive into Tal Afar has sent 90 percent of its population into panicky flight, while the rest are sending impassioned SOS messages as they were trapped inside homes by imposed curfews.

"The current offensive is another episode of Iraqi government violations of an already reached agreement with residents to end rebellion in the city peacefully", said Hazem Kallash, deputy chairman of Iraq's Kurdistan Front.

Fallujah Scenario

Clashes between US and Iraqi forces on one side and resistance elements on the other are not the first to take place in the city, raising fears a major offensive similar to the devastating one on Fallujah, which was turned into a ghost city, was under in Tal Afar.

In August of 2004, Tal Afar was the scene of a deadly US offensive that killed hundreds of its residents and displaced thousands.

The United States sees Tal Afar, near the Syrian border, as a conduit for "foreign fighters and military equipment" coming into Iraq to help resistance fighters fighting the occupying US forces and the Shiite-Kurdish-dominated Iraqi government.

Meanwhile Iraqi Red Crescent doctor informed mass-media: US used poisoned gas, chemical bombs against Resistance in Tall ‘Afar, IraqWar reported.

Dr. Muhammad Qasim, the Director of the Tall ‘Afar Branch of the Iraqi Red Crescent, announced that 90 percent of the people of the city had left as refugees because of the battles raging there as US occupation troops attack Iraqi Resistance forces in the area.

Dr. Qasim gave an exclusive statement to the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in Tall ‘Afar on Friday morning. He added that more than 170 cases of poisoning due to American chemical or poisoned gas bombs had been brought into hospitals outside Tall ‘Afar in the nearby cities of Mosul and al-Ba‘aj.

Dr. Qasim said that the US occupation forces used the poisoned chemical and gas bombs in Tall ‘Afar on Wednesday after their troops failed to break the Resistance defenses and get into the neighborhoods of the market and al-Mu‘allimin in the middle of the city.

The doctor stressed that hundreds of residents of the city have been put under threat of death by the savage American bombardment.

Through Mafakarat al-Islam, Dr. Qasim called on what he called “honest satellite TV stations to come to Tall ‘Afar and broadcast what is going on there to the world. He noted that the city remains, until now, in the hands of the Iraqi Resistance, and that the claims by al-‘Arabiyah TV and the puppet regime’s al-‘Iraqiyah station that the city had fallen to the US troops and their Iraqi puppet army were completely untrue.

He stressed again that the Resistance continues to control the entire city and that the US forces outside the city been using tactics of advance and retreat in its attacks on the city since Thursday.