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Al Jazeera (English)
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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Photographs of another American war crime, the murder of a wounded combatant
(Robert Fisk, The Independent, May 6, 2004)
The pictures are appalling, the words devastating. As a wounded Iraqi crawls from beneath a burning truck, an American helicopter pilot tells his commander that one of three men has survived his night air attack.. "Someone wounded,'' the pilot cries. Then he received the reply: "Hit him, hit the truck and him.'' As the helicopter's gun camera captures the scene on video, the pilot fires a 30mm gun at the wounded man, vaporising him in a second. . . . British and most European television stations censored the tape off the air last night on the grounds that the pictures were too terrible to show. But deliberately shooting a wounded man is a war crime under the Geneva Convention and this extraordinary film of US air crews in action over Iraq is likely to create yet another international outcry. . . . American and British personnel have been trying for weeks to persuade Western television stations to show video of the attack. Despite the efforts of reporters in Baghdad and New York, most television controllers preferred to hide the evidence from viewers. Only Canal Plus in France, ABC television in the United States and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation have so far had the courage to show the shocking footage. UK military personnel in the Gulf region have confirmed that the tape is genuine. . . . The video shows that the incident took four minutes, during which the two helicopter pilots - whose names are listed as Nager and Alioto - expended 300 high-velocity cannon rounds at their targets. The tape shows that the first 15 rounds missed the men. One of the pilots says: "F***, switching to range auto." The tape then documents the firing of four bursts of 20 rounds each at the three men. . . . The pictures, apparently taken through thermal-imaging cameras, leave no doubt that the pilot knew his third victim was wounded and crawling along the ground - and that whoever gave him the order to hit him also knew this. . . . It is common Israeli practice to kill wounded enemies from the air; a devastating helicopter assault by Israel on a Hizbollah training camp in Lebanon 10 years ago was accompanied by a series of attacks in which pilots sought out wounded guerrillas as they hid behind rocks in the Bekaa Valley and then fired at them. . . . The film, while it shows men acting in a suspicious manner, does not prove they were handling weapons. The occupation authorities in Baghdad chose to keep the incident secret when it occurred in December. Watching the video images, it is easy to understand why.

posted by Lorenzo 10:19 AM