US Troops kill civilians in Botched Strikes

[Moses]

U.S. Troops Kill Iraq Civilians in Botched Strikes

Sun Jan 9, 2005 12:40 PM ET
By Matt Spetalnick

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops mistakenly killed two Iraqi policemen and two bystanders near a checkpoint just hours after an American warplane exacted a heavy civilian toll when it bombed the wrong house, Iraqi officials said Sunday.

The back-to-back incidents Saturday fueled anti-American anger over the deaths of innocents during a raging insurgency just three weeks before Iraq's first election since U.S.-led forces toppled former President Saddam Hussein.

Residents said 14 people, including children, were killed in a strike in the northern village of Aaytha. They showed visitors 14 freshly dug graves. The military, making a rare admission of error in its fight against guerrillas, said five people died when a 500-pound bomb flattened the house.

Shortly afterwards, a U.S. military convoy was hit by a roadside bomb blast near a police checkpoint south of Baghdad in a lawless area known as the "Triangle of Death."

Troops escorting the vehicles struck back but at the wrong target, Interior Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul-Rahman said. Two police officers and two civilians were killed. He said a fifth Iraqi suffered a heart attack and died at the scene.

The military expressed regret and launched an investigation into the bombing at Aaytha, near the restive city of Mosul, but had no immediate comment on the convoy attack near Yusufiya.

Many Iraqis voiced resentment at what they call heavy-handed military tactics and callousness toward mounting civilian deaths, sentiment that has dented U.S. efforts to win hearts and minds and get the country behind the Jan. 30 ballot.

"Why did these poor people have to die?" lamented Baghdad taxi driver Doraid Abdul Khaliq, 28. "Bombing, shooting and running a tank over cars have all become something normal."

U.S. officials insist American forces do their utmost to avoid civilian casualties but say Sunni-led insurgents trying to disrupt the election mount many attacks from populated areas.

[nana]

This is nothing new although it's not something that was being given any attention by the media in the USA, (the American media has become, instead of the watch dogs of government, the lap dogs of government) here is a piece that was widely reported in several countries, this version was taken from an Australian news site- please notice the date of this report:

Source: Sidney Morning Herald, Australia

www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/02/1048962796085.html


'I saw the heads of my two little girls come off'

April 2 2003, 11:38 AM

An Iraqi mother in a van fired on by US soldiers says she saw her two young daughters decapitated in the incident that also killed her son and eight other members of her family.

The children's father, who was also in the van, said US soldiers fired on them as they fled towards a checkpoint because they thought a leaflet dropped by US helicopters told them to "be safe", and they believed that meant getting out of their village to Karbala.

Bakhat Hassan - who lost his daughters, aged two and five, his three-year-old son, his parents, two older brothers, their wives and two nieces aged 12 and 15, in the incident - said US soldiers at an earlier checkpoint had waved them through.

As they approached another checkpoint 40km south of Karbala, they waved again at the American soldiers.

"We were thinking these Americans want us to be safe," Hassan said through an Army translator at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital set up at a vast Army support camp near Najaf.

The soldiers didn't wave back. They fired.

"I saw the heads of my two little girls come off," Hassan's heavily pregnant wife, Lamea, 36, said numbly.

She repeated herself in a flat, even voice: "My girls - I watched their heads come off their bodies. My son is dead."

US officials originally gave the death toll from the incident as seven, but reporters at the scene placed it at 10. And Bakhat Hassan's terrible toll was 11 members of his family.

Hassan's father died at the Army hospital later.

US officials said the soldiers at an Army checkpoint who opened fire were following orders not to let vehicles approach checkpoints.

On Saturday, a suicide bomber had killed four US soldiers outside Najaf.

Details emerging from interviews with survivors of yesterday's incident tell a distressing tale of a family fleeing towards what they thought would be safety, tragically misunderstanding instructions.

Hassan's father, in his 60s, wore his best clothes for the trip through the American lines: a pinstriped suit.

"To look American," Hassan said.

An Army report written last night cited "a miscommunication with civilians" as the cause of the incident.

Hassan, his wife and another of his brothers are in intensive care at the MASH unit.

Another brother, sister-in-law and a seven-year-old child were released to bury the dead.

The Shi'ite family of 17 was packed into a 1974 Land Rover, so crowded that Bakhat, 35, was outside on the rear bumper hanging on to the back door.

Everyone else was piled on one another's laps in three sets of seats.

They were fleeing their farm town southeast of Karbala, where US attack helicopters had fired missiles and rockets the day before.

Helicopters also had dropped leaflets on the town: a drawing of a family sitting at a table eating and smiling with a message written in Arabic.

Sergeant 1st Class Stephen Furbush, an Army intelligence analyst, said the message read: "To be safe, stay put."

But Hassan said he and his father thought it just said: "Be safe".

To them, that meant getting away from the helicopters firing rockets and missiles.

His father drove. They planned to go to Karbala. They stopped at an Army checkpoint on the northbound road near Sahara, about 40km south of Karbala, and were told to go on, Hassan said.

But "the Iraqi family misunderstood" what the soldiers were saying, Furbush said.

A few kilometres later, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle came into view. The family waved as it came closer. The soldiers opened fire.

Hassan remembers an Army medic at the scene of the killings speaking Arabic.

"He told us it was a mistake and the soldiers were sorry," Hassan said.

"They believed it was a van of suicide bombers," Furbush said.

Hassan, his wife, his father and a brother were airlifted to the MASH unit.

Three doctors and three nurses worked on the father for four hours but he died despite their efforts.

Today, Hassan and his wife remain at the unit. He has staples in his head. She has a mangled hand and shrapnel in her face and shoulder.

Major Scott McDannold, an anaesthesiologist, said Hassan's brother, lying nearby, wouldn't make it. He is on a respirator with a broken neck.

On March 16, Hassan and his family began to harvest tomatoes, cucumbers, scallions and eggplant. It was a healthy crop, and they expected a good year.

"We had hope," he said. "But then you Americans came to bring us democracy and our hope ended."

Lamea is nine months pregnant.

"It would be better not to have the baby," she said.

"Our lives are over."

KRT

[nana]

For those who have not seen this horrific video from almost one year ago, of US forces in a helicopter firing on unarmed Iraqi farmers, one of them probablly wounded and trying to crawl to safety, follow this link:

www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2004/01/284087.mpg

You need Quicktime to see and hear it and it's a slow download for those of us still using 56k modems.

People reduced to computer game images on a computer screen - that's how to create an army of sociopaths who no longer see Iraqis as people like themselves.

From all the reports I've seen the US military's justification for shooting and bombing is nothing more than 'suspected' locations of 'insurgents'. Suspected!?!?!?! Anyone's imagination or hallucinations or beliefs are enough to justify, in their minds, killing anything and anyone that moves or even looks like they're 'playing dead'!!!!!! Hell they suspect every Iraqi to be an 'insurgent' and with the horrors being committed every day, they're fast turning the entire population into Iraqi patriots resisting an occupying foreign force.

[Moses]

Yes I was puzzled by the headline, since it is nothing new. I wondered what it meant that the headline was chosen, because as you say, this is not new, and is smaller than, say, the botched strike of fallujah, and the deliberate policy of killing civilians-- and now they want to foment civil war by forming death squads of Kurds and Shia to kill Sunnis.

In addition, this killing of civilians at checkpoints (an Israeli tactic embraced and adopted for this Israeli proxy war) has been going on from the beginning, and many returning soldiers are haunted by it.

I wondered if the headline meant that the media is going to begin reporting these things.

[nana]

I wondered if the headline meant that the media is going to begin reporting these things

One can only hope