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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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October 13th,
2007 - U.S. Investigates Civilian Toll in Airstrike |
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U.S.
Investigates Civilian Toll in Airstrike, but Holds Insurgents Responsible By Paul von Zielbauer October 13, 2007 New York Times Baghdad, Oct. 12 - The
American military said on Friday that it was vigorously investigating a
Thursday evening airstrike on a stronghold of insurgent leaders northwest of
Baghdad that also killed nine children and six women. The civilian toll is
one of the highest to result from a single American military action since the
beginning of the Iraq war. Rear Adm. Greg Smith, an
American military spokesman here, said the killings were “absolutely
regrettable,” but blamed the enemy fighters for engaging American forces
while using civilians as a shield. “We do not target
civilians,” the admiral said in an interview on Friday. “But when our forces
are fired upon, as they are routinely, then they have no option but to return
fire.” The airstrike, near Tharthar
Lake, a Sunni Arab region about 75 miles northwest of Baghdad, killed 19
senior-level insurgents with ties to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia after insurgents
first fired on a unit of American soldiers approaching a residential
structure, the United States military said. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is a
homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence says is foreign
led. “A ground element came under
fire from that building that we had to neutralize,” Admiral Smith said. It
was not clear on Friday whether American commanders knew that so many
civilians were in or near the structure when they authorized the airstrike. “The enemy has a vote here,”
Admiral Smith said, “and when he chooses to surround himself with civilians
and then fire upon U.S. forces, our forces have no choice but to return a
commensurate amount of fire. Which is what they did last evening.” The airstrike, on the eve of
the Id al-Fitr holiday to celebrate the end of Ramadan, occurred at a
delicate time for Iraqi and American officials here, after the mistaken or
inadvertent killing of noncombatants by American military and private
security forces. On Friday, a suicide bomber
pushing a candy cart into a playground in the northern town of Tuz Khurmato
killed one child, a 8-year-old boy, and wounded 23 others, a senior police
official said. A security guard, whose child was playing in the park, was
also killed after he tried to subdue the bomber as he entered the playground,
said Lt. Col. Abbas Muhammad, the city’s police chief. Colonel Muhammad identified
the guard as Abbas Sameen, 35, the father of three children. He said the dead
boy was Qasem Hasan Ismael. Friday was a national holiday,
when Sunni Arabs broke their fast to celebrate the end of the Muslim holy
month of Ramadan. As is customary, the children in Tuz Khurmato, a
religiously mixed city of Sunni Arabs, Shiite, Turkmen and Kurdish residents,
were playing in a temporary playground, with carnival rides and confection
booths in a lot usually used for truck parking. In other violence on Friday,
a car bomb in central Baghdad killed four people shopping in preparation for
the holiday and wounded 15 others, an Interior Ministry official said. Four
bodies were also found throughout the city, said the official, speaking on
the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. In the search for two
American soldiers, the military gave further details on Friday about the
latest discovery. The military said that an
American patrol found a weapons cache on Tuesday that included two American
M-4 service rifles and an American M-249 belt-fed machine gun, which belonged
to one of the captured soldiers, Specialist Alex R. Jimenez. After an attack on their
patrol on May 12 in an area south of Baghdad, Specialist Jimenez and Pvt.
Byron W. Fouty were captured, along with a third soldier, Pfc. Joseph J.
Anzack Jr., whose body has since been found. A search has been under way
for the two soldiers since they were seized in May. They were assigned to the
Fourth Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, Second Brigade Combat Team, 10th
Mountain Division. The missing soldiers’ identification cards and wallets
were discovered in June during a raid on a house in Samarra, north of
Baghdad. Mudhafer al-Husaini
contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York
Times from Kirkuk. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/world/middleeast/13iraq.html |