By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, April 15, 2004; 8:14 AM

Judging by the war of words between U.S. generals and Arab cable TV networks about civilian casualties in the siege of Fallujah, you might think there's a big difference in how U.S. and foreign news sites are covering the story.

You'd be wrong. Although foreign news sites tend to pursue and play up the Iraqi civilian casualty angle more than U.S. sites, the substance of the reporting on most news sites, domestic and international, is similar.

The controversy focuses on TV coverage of U.S. intentions in Fallujah. On Tuesday Aljazeera.net, the Web site of the Arab cable news network, rejected the accusation of General John Abizaid, the head of the U.S. Central Command, that the network had portrayed U.S. military action "as purposely targeting civilians."

"We absolutely do not do that, and I think everybody knows that," Abizaid said. "They have not been truthful in their reporting."

A statement from the Qatar-based news site protested the charge.

"Aljazeera rejects these accusations and consider them a threat to the right and the mission of the media outlets to cover the reality of what is happening in Iraq during this tough and complicated field circumstances."

But when civilian casualties are reported in the online media, as opposed to cable news, the differences between U.S. and foreign perspectives narrow considerably. Some Arab news sites, such as Islam Online, have run photos of wounded babies with their Fallujah news stories. But their numbers do not dramatically differ from the casualty figures reported in the Western media.

In the United States, the most common report of civilian casualties was an Associated Press story quoting Fallujah hospital director Rafie al-Issawi saying 600 people had been killed in Fallujah, most of them women and children. Many U.S. news sites ran this story, ranging from the San Francisco Chronicle to the Atlanta Journal Constitution (registration required). The AP story included the reporter's account of visiting a cemetery in Fallujah and counting 300 new graves, many of them inscribed with the names of women and children.

Many foreign news sites have relied more on a slightly more specific, and lower, estimate from Agence France Press, the French news agency. An AFP story on Monday quoted a senior Sunni political leader who had been in Fallujah as saying 160 women, 141 children and "many" elderly people had been killed. Fouda Rawi, a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party who was in the city to negotiate a cease-fire, said he obtained the casualty figures from hospital sources.

Middle East Online, a London-based news site aimed at an Arabic audience, touted Rawi's numbers as the "first precise figures on the number of civilian deaths" in Fallujah. So did the Saudi Gazette in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

But these sites also included the point of view of U.S. military spokesmen. Said the Gazette, "US officials have stressed it was impossible to pin down how many civilians had died in the drive in the city before the ceasefire took hold over the weekend."

The AFP story was picked up widely. In Australia, the Herald Sun in Melbourne, the Age, a national daily, and ABC Online, the site of the Australian Broadcasting Company, all picked it up.

Rawi's claim was also widely reported in South Africa where a number of sites published it, including the Mail and Guardian in Johannesburg and News24 site in Cape Town.

A handful of sites claiming their own sources in Fallujah reported civilian casualty figures in the same range as were reported by AP and AFP.

The Hong Kong-based Asia Times quoted Osama Saleh al-Tikrit, a dentist at a Baghdad Hospital, saying that "at least" 600 civilians had been killed and up to 1,500 injured. The site also quoted Dr. Abed al-Illah, another representative of the Iraqi Islamic Party, as saying "about 350 out of the 600 dead were women and children. One was only eight months old. Many died from simple wounds and could have been saved if they had medical attention."

The Asia Times asserted that "Fallujah residents are describing what happened last week as 'the new Jenin' -- a direct reference to the lethal April 2002 Israeli offensive unleashed against a Palestinian camp."

But the Jenin analogy points up the hazards of estimating civilian deaths in combat zones inaccessible to journalists. While Palestinians originally claimed Israeli forces had massacred hundreds of civilians at Jenin, an investigation by Human Rights Watch concluded that 52 people had been killed in the fighting, 23 of whom were civilians.

The Post has reported the claims of the hospital sources and claims by U.S. military spokesmen that most of the victims were fighters. But when asked Tuesday about civilian casualties in Fallujah, the Post's Baghdad correspondent Anthony Shadid said, "Until journalists can get in and investigate on their own, I don't think we're going to get a fuller picture of what's going on."