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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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June 26th,
2007 - Village Disputes Story of Deadly Attack |
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Village Disputes Story of Deadly
Attack By Jim Muir BBC News June 26, 2007 On 22 June the US military
announced that its attack helicopters, armed with missiles, engaged and
killed 17 al-Qaeda gunmen who had been trying to infiltrate the village of
al-Khalis, north of Baquba, where operation "Arrowhead Ripper" had
been under way for the previous three days. The item was duly carried by
international news agencies and received widespread coverage, including on
the BBC News website. But villagers in
largely-Shia al-Khalis say that those who died had nothing to do with
al-Qaeda. They say they were local village guards trying to protect the
township from exactly the kind of attack by insurgents the US military says
it foiled. They say that of 16 guards,
11 were killed and five others injured - two of them seriously - when US
helicopters fired rockets at them and then strafed them with heavy machinegun
fire. Minutes before the attack,
they had been co-operating with an Iraqi police unit raiding a suspected
insurgent hideout, the villagers said. They added that the guards,
lightly armed with the AK47 assault rifles that are a feature of practically
every home in Iraq, were essentially a local neighbourhood watch paid by the
village to monitor the dangerous insurgent-ridden area to the immediate
south-west at Arab Shawkeh and Hibhib, where the al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi was killed a year ago. US account Here is the version of the
incident issued by the US-led Multinational Forces on 22 June: "Coalition Forces
attack helicopters engaged and killed 17 al-Qaeda gunmen southwest of Khalis,
Friday. "Iraqi police were
conducting security operations in and around the village when Coalition
attack helicopters from the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade and ground forces
from 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, observed more than 15
armed men attempting to circumvent the IPs and infiltrate the village. "The attack
helicopters, armed with missiles, engaged and killed 17 al-Qaeda gunmen and
destroyed the vehicle they were using." Iraqi version This is the story as told to
the BBC by several local villagers: At around 2am on Friday
morning, the village guards were at their usual base in an unfinished
building on the edge of the Hayy al-Junoud quarter about 2km (1.2 miles)
south-west of al-Khalis village centre. They were surprised when a
convoy of Iraqi police suddenly turned up, headed by the commander of the
Khalis emergency squad, Col Hussein Kadhim. The police told them they
were about to raid a suspect house in nearby al-Akrad Street and asked for
the village mukhtar (headman) to accompany them. The Mukhtar of Hayy
al-Junoud, Jassem Khalil, and his brothers Abbas and Ali, went with the
police. Some of the other guards, about half altogether, also offered to go
along. The raid turned out to be a
false alarm - there was nothing suspicious at the house in question. But as the police and guards
began to return, the police received an urgent radio message from the Joint
Operations Centre saying that US helicopters were about to raid the area. The police disappeared
immediately. But before the guards could even get to their own car, they were
hit by a rocket strike by American helicopters which suddenly appeared
overhead. So too were the remainder of
the guards, still at their base in the unfinished building nearby. The rocket attacks were
followed by a prolonged period of strafing by heavy machinegun fire from the
helicopters. "It was like a
battlefront, but with the fire going only in one direction," said a
local witness. "There was no return fire". When frightened villagers
ventured out at first light, they found 11 of the village guards dead, some
of their bodies cut into small pieces by the munitions used against them. Those who survived with
injuries were Bashir (an off-duty policeman), Alwan Hussein, Abu Ra'id,
Salam, and Saif Khalil, the son of Abbas Khalil who died. Questions raised The families of those who
died are seeking a meeting with the head of the al-Khalis town council. They
are incensed that the village guards should be described as "al-Qaeda
gunmen". All but two of those killed
were Shia and they have been buried at Najaf. The other two who were from the
local minority Sunni community. A spokesman for the US-led
Multinational Forces said they were investigating the incident in the light
of the allegations. If the villagers' account is
true, the incident would raise many questions, including: - On what basis did the US
helicopters launch their attack that night? - How many other coalition
reports of successes against "al-Qaeda fighters" are based on
similar mistakes, especially when powerful remote weaponry is used? The incident also highlights
the problems the news media face in verifying such combat incidents in remote
areas where communications are disrupted, where direct independent access is
impossible because of the many lethal dangers they would face, and where only
the official military version of events is available. The Victims Jassem Khalil, the Mukhtar
of Hayy al-Junoud Abbas Khalil, his brother Ali Khalil, his other
brother Kamal Hadi, their cousin Shaker Adnan Abdul Wahhab Ibrahim Mohammad al-Zubaie Abbas Muzhir Fadhel Jamal Hussein Alwan Abdul Hussein Abdullah Ali Jawad Kadhem External link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6239896.stm |