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US
Troops Turn Botched Saddam Raid
Into
A Massacre
by
Robert Fisk
July
28, 2003
Baghdad.
Obsessed with capturing Saddam Hussein, American soldiers turned a botched raid
on a house in the Mansur district of Baghdad yesterday into a bloodbath,
opening fire on scores of Iraqi civilians in a crowded street and killing up to
11, including two children, their mother and crippled father. At least one
civilian car caught fire, cremating its occupants.
The
vehicle carrying the two children and their mother and father was riddled by
bullets as it approached a razor-wired checkpoint outside the house.
Amid
the fury generated among the largely middle-class residents of Mansur - by
ghastly coincidence, the killings were scarcely 40 metres from the houses in
which 16 civilians died when the Americans tried to kill Saddam towards the end
of the war in April - whatever political advantages were gained by the killing
of Saddam's sons have been squandered. A doctor at the Yarmouk hospital, which
received four of the dead, turned on me angrily last night, shouting: "If
an American came to my emergency room, maybe I would kill him."
Two
civilians, both believed to have been driving with their families, were brought
to the Yarmouk, one with abdominal wounds and the other with "his brain
outside of his head", according to another doctor.
At
the scene of the killings, there was pandemonium. While US troops were loading
the bullet-shattered cars on trucks - and trying to stop cameramen filming the
carnage - crowds screamed abuse at them.
One
American soldier a few feet from me climbed into the seat of his Humvee, threw
his helmet on the floor of the vehicle and shouted: "Shit! Shit!"
There
was no doubt about the target: the home of Sheikh Rabia Mohamed Habib, a
prominent tribal leader who had met Saddam but who was not even in his house
when the Americans stormed it. One report says they killed a guard as they
entered.
"The
Americans searched the house completely, very roughly," Sheikh Habib said.
"It seems they thought Saddam Hussein was inside."
It
appears the killings started as the troops were searching the building and as
motorists approached the barbed wire which the soldiers had placed without
warning across the road. Witnesses said the first car contained at least two
men. "The second contained two children about 10, their mother and their
father who had been wounded in the Iran-Iraq war - he was a cripple," a
local shopkeeper told me. "They all died. The man's legs were cut in half
by the bullets," he added. A third car then approached the Americans, who
opened fire again. One of the occupants fled, but the other two remained in the
vehicle and were killed.
When
another car arrived US troops riddled it with more bullets and it burst into
flames. It is believed that two people were inside and both were burnt to
death. "The Americans didn't try to help the civilians they had shot, not
once," a witness said. "They let the car burn and left the bodies
where they lay, even the children. It was we who had to take them to the
hospitals."
Yet
again, false informers, ill-trained American soldiers who appeared to exercise
no fire control and a lack of military planning has created a tragedy among the
people the Americans claimed to be 'liberating' from Saddam Hussein only 15
weeks ago. Last night, there were reports from the southern city of Karbala
that three men had been shot dead by American troops during a demonstration.
Robert Fisk is an award winning foreign
correspondent for The Independent
(UK), where this article first appeared. He is the author of Pity Thy
Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (The Nation Books, 2002 edition). Posted
with author’s permission.