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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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November 29th,
2006 - U.S. Troops Kill 5 Girls in Assault on Insurgents |
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U.S. Troops Kill 5 Girls in
Assault on Insurgents By Edward Wong New York Times November 29, 2006 Baghdad, Nov. 28 - American
troops killed five girls, including at least one baby, and what the military
described as either a boy or a man, when the troops attacked a house Tuesday
in volatile Anbar Province after they suspected insurgents of firing at them
from the roof. Another person, which the
military described in a written statement as either a girl or a young woman,
was wounded in the attack and refused treatment by the Americans. The military said the
killings occurred after the Americans spotted two suspected insurgents before
dawn near a roadside bomb in the town of Hamaniyah, west of Baghdad. The men
fled to the roof of a nearby house. When the Americans began defusing the
bomb, the suspected insurgents began shooting, the military said. The military said the
Americans returned fire with machine guns and small arms and rounds from the
main gun of one or more tanks. After the firefight, the Americans discovered
the six dead Iraqis in the house. It was unclear what happened
to the suspected insurgents, but the military said “it was reported” that one
was wounded in the fight and carried away by other insurgents. “In a very tragic way, today
reminds us that insurgents’ actions throughout Iraq are felt by all,” Lt.
Col. Bryan Salas, a Marine spokesman, said in the statement. “Efforts are
under way to coordinate and offer available assistance to surviving family
members.” Anbar Province, a vast swath
of desert and Euphrates River towns stretching from Baghdad to Iraq’s western
border, is the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency, which is battling to
drive out the Americans and unseat the majority Shiites from the Iraqi
government. American troops in Anbar are
fighting a holding action, unable to make any real headway against the
insurgency while facing a mostly hostile civilian population. The pressures
have already led to prominent incidents of civilian deaths — one unit of
Marines is being investigated for whether it wrongfully killed 24 unarmed
civilians in the town of Haditha last year. In Baghdad, an Air Force
spokesman, Brig. Gen. Stephen Hoog, said the military was still recovering
parts from an F-16 fighter jet that crashed near the capital on Monday. It
was unclear whether the jet and its pilot had been attacked, he said. Using
an aerial drone, the military had observed insurgents in the area of the
crash site, the general said. The military said a marine
died on Monday in Anbar from combat injuries. Violence continued to roil
Iraq a day before a scheduled meeting between President Bush and Prime
Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki in Amman, Jordan. At least 30 bodies were
discovered in Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said. Four people were
killed and 40 wounded when two car bombs exploded behind the morgue at
Yarmouk Hospital in western Baghdad. A barrage of mortar rounds in the Sunni
neighborhood of Ghazaliya hurt at least 20 people. At least 19 people were
killed or found dead in Diyala Province, a police official said. In Kirkuk,
at least one civilian was killed and 22 wounded when a suicide belt bomber
exploded near a convoy carrying the governor of Tamim Province. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/world/middleeast/29iraq.html |