Here are a few stories from the last month or so, culled from my
Iraq Front News (
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IraqFrontNews/, IraqFrontNews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com).
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US troops wound six Iraqis after convoy attackedhttp://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L12542715.htmRAMADI, Iraq, Jan 12 (Reuters) - U.S. soldiers shot and wounded six Iraqi civilians on Monday in response to an attack on their convoy in the tense town of Ramadi, residents said.
The U.S. military had no immediate comment.
Witnesses said U.S. soldiers fired randomly after their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb. The soldiers then raided houses in the area.
Reuters television footage showed cars and front doors pierced by bullets. One man showed bullet holes in his kitchen pots and pans as well as a shattered television screen.
"There were only innocent children here," he said. "What did they think, that Saddam Hussein was here?"
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U.S. Troops Accused of Killing Iraqi Couple in Attack on House; Kurdish Party Office AttackedBy Ali Ahmed Associated Press Writer
Published: Jan 7, 2004
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAZUP7H5PD.html FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) - U.S. troops shelled a house after coming under fire in this hotbed of the anti-American insurgency, killing an Iraqi couple, witnesses said Wednesday.
No immediate comment was made by the U.S. military, despite telephone calls and e-mail messages to troops based in the restive town of Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad.
Footage from Associated Press Television News showed a wall of collapsed concrete bricks and two walls splattered with blood where neighbors said Ahmed Hassan Farhoud, 37, and his wife Suham Omar, 28, were sitting when the house was hit by a shell. They said the couple's five children were in bed in an adjoining room and survived unhurt.
"This is democracy? These corpses?" angry neighbor Raad Majeed asked at the hospital, gesturing to the couple's remains on gurneys covered with bloody sheets. "It's a crime against humanity."
Other neighbors, who said they were too scared of retaliation to give their names, said it appeared someone fired at the soldiers in the suburb Tuesday night, and that the troops, on a routine raid in the district, thought the fire had come from the Hassan household.
"They just brought in their tank and fired at their house from 200 meters (yards) away," Majeed said. "What did these people do wrong?"
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Roadside bomb kills 2 GIs, IraqiThe Associated Press
Originally published December 22, 2003, 8:50 AM EST
http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-iraq1222,0,5463786.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines...
In Samarra, a 70-year-old man died when U.S. troops put a bag over his head and prepared to detain him Sunday night, Iraqis said. Neighbors said Mehdi al-Jamal died of a heart attack.
One person was killed during an airborne raid Sunday in Jalulah, on the house of a sheik suspected of directing local resistance, said spokeswoman Maj. Josslyn Aberle of the 4th Infantry Division.
A 60-year-old woman was killed Sunday when soldiers blasted open the reinforced steel door of her home, said Lt. Col. Henry Kievenaar, who was directing the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in raids in Rawah.
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US military using brutality, fear, and intimidation in Al-AdamiyahDahr Jamail, Electronic Iraq, 27 December 2003
http://electroniciraq.net/news/1292.shtml...
Some men who attended the demonstration say they witnessed five Iraqi men who were wounded by the American soldier's gunfire. They say that these five men were taken under a nearby bridge and executed by the Americans. The bodies were found later and taken to the morgue in Al-Adamiyah. The US military here has not commented on any such atrocity.
However, along with this dispatch I submit to you a photo from inside the Al-Adamiyah morgue of two of five, unidentified bodies, each shot at close range, execution style. Gunpowder burns mark the skin on them. One man has been shot at close range in the back of the head.
The people of Al-Adamiyah claim that the family members of those slain, in order to retrieve the bodies from the morgue, first had to report to the US camp near Al-Adamiyah. They claim they had to sign a form stating that their family member was shot by Iraqi Police, not US soldiers. Then they had to take this signed form to the morgue in order to obtain the body, as the hospital and morgue was sealed off by Iraqi Police (following orders from the Americans) for several days following the terrible events of December 14th.
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Iraq council head renews call for direct voteThe Associated Press
Originally published December 3, 2003, 12:31 PM EST
http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-iraq1203,0,5267177.story?coll=bal-home-headlines ...
The raid occurred in Hawija, 155 miles north of Baghdad. The U.S. military said it detained 34 people and confiscated 70 small arms along with six rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
However, many villagers said the Americans had fired randomly at people in the area.
Alaa Hosein, a 22-year old farmer interviewed in Kirkuk hospital, said he and his cousin were returning from their fields when soldiers opened fire. Hosein was hit in the right leg, while his cousin was critically injured in the head.
"They came to make trouble, not to restore security," Hosein said from his hospital bed.
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Arrests, apologies in IraqErrors often bring payments
By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff, 12/26/2003
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2003/12/26/arrests_apologies_in_iraq/Abbas is one of dozens of men arrested by mistake during a series of nighttime raids in Samarra over the last week.
His detention and awkward repatriation illustrate the challenges faced by US soldiers trying to process dozens of informant tips, interrogate hundreds of detainees, and track several hundred more suspected guerrillas.
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"A lot of them just hate us because of collateral damage we cause while going after a legitimate target," said Captain Alex Williams, the brigade's S-2, or intelligence officer. "We try to limit follow-on attacks by giving on-the-spot `I'm sorry' payments."
...
He doled out $300 for the windows blown out when soldiers swooped in to arrest her husband, and instructed Abbas to pay weekly visits to the nearby US base, Brassfield-Mora -- named for two soldiers killed in anti-American attacks. Abbas refused to touch the money himself, allowing his wife to accept it, and complained about the black eye he received during his arrest.
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"Your actions are only as good as your intel," Colonel Nate Sassaman, Brown's commander, said, reviewing the raids. "A lot of the intel isn't so good."
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At another house, Brown handed $300 to a man whose front door was blown up during a nighttime raid that netted no arrests.
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US convoy attacked in Mosulhttp://www.wqad.com/Global/story.asp?S=1573070 Baghdad, Iraq-AP -- U-S troops have intensified their hunt for rebels and weapons in Iraq with house-to-house searches in former strongholds of Saddam Hussein.
Soldiers raided homes in Fallujah shortly after midnight, and journalists have reported similar raids in other areas, including Samarra.
...
A cameraman for Associated Press Television News reports an Iraqi civilian was seriously injured, but the soldiers weren't hurt.
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US army conducts raids near Syrian border, kills Iraqi woman22 December 2003
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2003/December/focusoniraq_December144.xml§ion=focusoniraq
BAGHDAD - An Iraqi woman was killed on Sunday in an explosion when US soldiers blew up a door during a raid in a town near Iraq’s border with Syria, the US military said in a statement on Monday.
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AP: Iraq to Stop Counting Civilian DeadBy NIKO PRICE, Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031210/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_civilian_casualties&cid=540&ncid=1480 ...
Iraqi civilians, too, have continued to die both in U.S. raids of suspected insurgent hideouts and in the rebels' attacks.
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Iraq: ‘Killings in Ramadi’, ‘Catching Up’ and ‘Faroukh’, from Jo Wilding's Diary December 3rd
Killings in Ramadi
http://www.unobserver.com/layout5.php?id=1240&blz=1 Two days before the end of Ramadan, just as they were about to break their fast, the family was interrupted by two groups of US troops from the 82nd Airborne Division bursting into the house, from opposite sides. The family dived for cover and the troops fired on each other, killing three of their own. They then separated the women and girls, putting them in an outside kitchen building of the home near Ramadi.
Three men, brothers Ibrahim and Sabah Odai and their cousin, were taken outside the house, forced face down in the mud and shot dead.
The next day the military returned to the village bringing papers with them. They were sorry but they had raided the wrong house, acting on false information. Claims for compensation for any damage suffered could be submitted, along with proof of fault, photographs of damage, medical reports, death certificates, details of the amount of money claimed, and so on, to the nearest office.
The women of the village were in mourning, in black, indoors, the widow and children of one man, the mother of the two brothers, a little girl with a dressing covering a shrapnel wound on her face, a young woman with her arm heavily bandaged. The house was more or less destroyed. A white car was a strainer of bullet holes. There were bloodstains on the ground where the men were executed.
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Arresting ChildrenJo Wilding, Electronic Iraq, 18 December 2003
http://electroniciraq.net/news/1274.shtml"Two days ago there was a demonstration after school finished, against the coalition and for Saddam. Yesterday the American army came and surrounded the whole block. They just crashed into the school, 6, 7, 8 into every classroom with their guns. They took the name of every student and matched the names to the photos they got from the day before and then arrested the students. They actually dragged them by their shirts onto the floor and out of the class."
They wouldn't give their names. The children at Adnan Kheiralla Boys' School in the Amiriya district of Baghdad were still scared, still seething with rage. Another boy, Hakim Hamid Naji, was taken today. "They were kicking him," one of the pupils said. A car pulled up and a tall, thin boy ran into the school, talked briefly with staff and left again. The kids said the soldiers had come looking for this boy too.
The headmaster, too, was reluctant to speak. No, he said, looking down at the desk, there were no guns. But Ahmed, an English teacher, followed the soldiers on the raid. "The translators had masks or scarves because maybe they are from this area. They came and they chose several students and they took them. The demonstration started after school on Tuesday. I advised them not to do it because I am their teacher and the Americans don't care. The children had pictures of Saddam Hussein from their text books and that's all, so they demonstrated and just said we want Saddam Hussein.
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One of the boys told me, "Only 40 kids out of all of us were on the first demonstration but after the raid, we will all go out on Saturday after school and demonstrate against the occupation. They have turned us all against the American soldiers. We don't care about their tanks, we don't care about their machine guns, we don't care about their prisons any more."
Outside the school, Rana asked me, "Did you see the bodies in Amiriya? There were bodies in the street, Americans and Iraqis. They stopped an ambulance, threw in 5 bodies and said go, just go. It is a war zone. They don't want to give the bodies to the families. Even my neighbour, he was killed by the Americans a few days ago and they didn't receive his body yet. When they went to the hospital the doctors said you have to go to the Americans, bring permission from them and we will give you your son's body."
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Power failures widespread in BaghdadMeanwhile...
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.comToday (well, technically, yesterday) there was another large demonstration in Baghdad which was a peaceful anti-occupation demonstration. The demonstrators were mainly university students and teachers who were opposing the raids occurring in some colleges and universities. They were demanding the release of three women who were detained when the Technology University in Baghdad was raided. Their spokesperson, a professor, I think, said that this was going to be the first demonstration in a long series of anti-occupation activism being organized by teachers and students.
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Detained, Bludgeoned and Electrocuted into a ComaDahr Jamail
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5482.htm 7 January 2003: (ICH) Sadiq Zoman Abrahim, 55 years old, was detained this past August in Kirkuk by US Soldiers during a home raid which produced no weapons. He was taken to the police office in Kirkuk, questioned by the Americans there, then transferred to Kirkuk Airport Detention Center.
It was from this detention center he was transferred to Tikrit Airport Detention Center. While in this detention center Mr. Abrahim managed to find a man who was about to be released, and have him pass on to his family information about where he was.
It was from this place that the Americans transferred him, comatose, to the hospital in Tikrit.
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