The US military hospital at the air base al-Habbaniyah had begun to receive dead and wounded personnel from the devastating Mujahideen rocket assault on the US Falcon arsenal in the southern Baghdad suburb of ad-Durah. Just before midnight Tuesday, the Mujahideen fired barrages of Katyusha and Grad rockets into the arsenal, the largest such facility in occupied Iraq, causing the ordnance to begin to explode. Western news reports stated that the blasts continued for hours lighting up the nighttime sky over Baghdad, the Al Basrah reported.
Three huge US transport aircraft emblazoned with the red cross had flown into the base, and casualties were being unloaded and sent into the hospital at the al-Habbaniyah base, located some 70km west of Baghdad.
Later, on Wednesday morning, two more huge transport planes had arrived in the US-occupied al-Habbaniyah airbase, 70km west of Baghdad carrying casualties from the devastating assault on America's Falcon Base in the US-occupied as-Saqr (Falcon) Forward Base in Sukkaniya located in the southern Baghdad suburb of ad-Durah.
Eyewitnesses in the village of al-Bu Mar‘i, about 2km from the US-occupied air base, as saying that as of that time, a total of five enormous transport planes had flown into the base emblazoned with the red cross. The transports came in under fighter escort, the fighter planes remained aloft circling al-Habbaniyah as the transports set down.
The witnesses said that the US occupation forces illuminated the base - something they do not normally do - as swarms of American helicopters prowled the skies around the area, trying to prevent Mujahideen rocket attacks.
At 7am Wednesday morning the last of a total of nine huge transport planes had landed at the US-occupied al-Habbaniyah airbase, site of America's largest military hospital in the country, during the night.
A source in the Iraqi puppet army told Mafkarat al-Islam that the US forces transported more than 90 Iraqi puppet troops to hospital for treatment after the blasts began to shake the southern part of the city.
The new American military hospital in al-Habbaniyah, reportedly the largest in occupied Iraq, was opened on 12 May this year in response to rising US casualties.
The puppet "Defense Ministry" source told Mafkarat al-Islam that the base would never return to the way it had been prior to the attack and that it was now a "burned out wasteland with no buildings."
Iraqi puppet officials expected that the losses sustained by the US military as a result of the destruction of the Falcon Arsenal would total more than a billion US dollars.
The Falcon base was the biggest US arsenal in central Iraq and was the launching point for US military operations. The arsenal contained more than 50 tanks; numerous artillery pieces; a landing strip for Chinook helicopters, some of which were parked there when the place exploded; in addition to armories containing weapons and ammunition. He said that all the buildings and furnishings of the base had been totally destroyed, and the archive records of the US troops was completely wiped out.
At least 30 US Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles were known to have been destroyed in the devastating Resistance attack on the Falcon Arsenal in southern Baghdad.
the US had used 13 huge military transport trucks to haul completely charred American armored vehicles out of the remains of the American Falcon base. The US forces hid the burnt wreckage of the vehicles behind the vegetable wholesale market known as the ‘Ulwat ar-Rashid Commercial Market.
Witnesses reported that about 15 minutes before sunset Wednesday, the procession of vehicles under US helicopter air cover and escorted by Humvees took the wrecked vehicles, estimated to number at least 22 to the back wall of the ‘Ulwah. The Americans then set up a guard post to control access to the wrecked vehicles.
The Americans also set up a checkpoint 2km away where they confiscated cell phones with built-in cameras because travelers on their way to the village of as-Sa‘idat would be able clearly to see the wrecked armored vehicles.
The Iraqi Mujahiden group the Islamic Army in Iraq had issued a communiqué taking responsibility for the devastating attack on the US arsenal at the as-Saqr (Falcon) Forward Base Tuesday night
The communiqué said that the missiles "by the grace of God landed amongst mountains of munitions and began to explode and throughout Baghdad the thunder of the explosions could be heard.", al-Jazeera reported.
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