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Al Jazeera (English)
    Baghdad Burning Blog (by Riverbend, an Iraqi civilian girl)
            Dahr Jamail's Blog from Baghdad
                Imad Khadduri's blog "Free Iraq" (scroll down for English version)

Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Liberation by murder: Baghdad falls to American invasion
(James Conachy, 10 April 2003)
What the media has chosen not to focus its lenses on are those, the vast majority, who are not cheering or applauding—the countless thousands who cannot cheer because they are either gravely wounded or dead, and the tens of thousands who have lost loved ones and are benumbed with grief. . . . It may never be known how many Iraqis were killed.... It would have to be over 10,000 uniformed Iraqis and more if you include irregulars.” Dana Dillion, a military analyst for the Heritage Foundation, commented: “It’s difficult to verify, especially when you’re dropping bombs on people and you don’t go and count the bodies. . . . At least 2,000 Iraqis were killed in clashes from April 3 to April 4 at the approaches to and within Baghdad’s international airport. The American military claims as many as 3,000 Iraqis were killed on April 5 during a three-hour assault through southwestern Baghdad by tanks from the Third Infantry Division. At least 1,000 Iraqis are believed to have been killed on April 7 during the US tank assault on the Republican presidential palace on the banks of the Tigris. . . . The casualties among Iraqi civilians have been horrific. Journalists for Arab television networks and newspapers, the British Guardian and Independent and the Washington Post have all testified that large numbers of civilians were killed and wounded by the US and British forces as they crush resistance in Baghdad, Basra and other Iraqi cities and towns. The US military, in particular, has indiscriminately bombed civilian areas and targeted civilian vehicles. . . . A dispatch filed April 8 for the Washington Post by correspondent Anthony Shadid cited a wounded man at Baghdad’s Kindi hospital, who said, “I’m a civilian. My car was attacked. They attacked my car.” Another man wounded by shrapnel in an artillery barrage during the April 5 attack on southern Baghdad stated: "We didn’t do anything to them. I was 100 percent sure they would not shoot at a civilian. Now I’m 100 percent sure they will." A man from the southern suburb of Yamama accused US forces of “firing at any car, any person.” The hospital was reportedly stacking bodies on top of one another in its morgue. . . . According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 100 civilian casualties per hour were being brought into Baghdad hospitals following the April 5 US armored assault. Morphine and other medicines were running out, staff were exhausted and operating facilities were stretched to the limit. The WHO reported amputations being performed without adequate anesthesia. . . . Outside Baghdad, similar reports of carnage have been filed. A correspondent for the Saudi Arabian-based Arab News interviewed a wounded resident of the small town of Sanawa on April 8: “One Iraqi soldier will enter a neighborhood and fire a few shots at a fighter plane, and they [the US aircraft] will respond with a barrage of shots killing as many as 50 civilians in the effort to get him.” A local resident, Sami Osama, was allegedly shot dead when he did not stop on a verbal command "given in English" by US troops. . . . On top of the loss of life inflicted on the Iraqi people, many of their cities and towns have been devastated. The power generation and communication infrastructure has been destroyed or damaged. Water and drainage mains have been ruptured, cutting off water supplies and flooding suburbs with raw sewage. Bridges, highways and hundreds of government and civilian buildings have been reduced to rubble, along with hundreds of houses and office buildings. . . . There is little doubt that large sections of Iraqi society will emerge from the invasion deeply traumatized. . . . The war against Iraq is an atrocity. The Iraqis did not welcome the American and British troops as liberators, but rather fought them for what they were—invaders seeking to impose colonial rule on the country. The response of the Bush administration and the Pentagon, with the support of the British and Australian governments, which sent troops to participate, was to order a bloodbath. . . . The world has witnessed the US utilizing its overwhelming military superiority to massacre Iraqi soldiers and civilians, lay waste to the country’s cities, and kill international journalists attempting to document its crimes. The scene of jubilant American troops in Baghdad, hoisting the stars and stripes over statues and buildings, is both ugly and tragic.

posted by LoZo 4:03 PM