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

 

The battle for Najaf
(Scott Baldauf, csmonitor.com, August 7, 2004)
Overhead, we hear and see American helicopters, jet fighters, and unmanned drones crossing the sky. Hundreds of yards away, we can hear American mechanized patrols - Humvees and Bradley fighting machines and armored personnel carriers from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which had just arrived in Najaf about 10 days before, on July 31. . . . The fighting is close by, too close. Marine helicopters swoop low over this residential neighborhood repeatedly and fire heavy machine guns and even rockets into Mahdi Army positions. . . . By satellite phone, we get details from the US military. A US Marine spokeswoman says the fighting began at 1 a.m., when Mahdi Army fighters attacked the main police station. The police called for Iraqi Army support, and by 3 a.m., the US Marines were called in as well. . . . While we stay put, the battle lines keep changing around us. At one point, a team of Mahdi Army fighters drive into our neighborhood, set up a mortar, fire two rounds, and then put the mortar tube back into the car, all in just under a minute. We take cover in the event that US Marines respond with precision radar that traces mortar and artillery trajectories back to their source. The Marine response, thankfully, never comes. . . . Inside their homes, residents do their best to get on with their lives. One man shows us pictures of his car, a Volvo, destroyed in the fighting on Monday, when a convoy of six US Marine Humvees ventured into a neighborhood close to the home of Moqtada al-Sadr and came under militia fire. The man had lent the car to a cousin, who was using it as a taxi. Now it is a charred shell. . . . Mahdi Army members consider Monday's US Marine firefight a provocation, the start of this week's battle. But for this man, it's just a senseless personal loss. . . . "I myself welcomed the Americans when they threw out Saddam," says Mr. Kamal, an auto mechanic who is now unemployed. "I took pictures of myself with US soldiers and brought my own horse to them if it could be of service. But now I realize what is happening here in Iraq is because of the Americans." . . . At the main hospital, Al Hakeem, cars are bringing in civilian casualties, most of them injuries from shrapnel and gunshots. A few are taken directly to the morgue. A man at the gate escorts us inside, announcing that a mortar shell landed very near the hospital itself, just 45 minutes ago. In the courtyard, a man is being wheeled by on a gurney, bleeding profusely. Another man, an Iraqi police officer with a pistol still strapped to his belt, walks past us with a bandage on his left shoulder. He glares at us and turns around to shout insults at us. Colleagues hold him back and lead him away. . . . But we are stopped before we can see the full extent of the civilian casualties. Abu Zayed, head of hospital security, says that he has been ordered to expel all journalists from hospital grounds. Relatives of the wounded are so upset, they are likely to attack journalists, who they believe are either Americans or are supportive of the Americans. "I cannot protect you from the people inside," says Mr. Zayed, the security chief. . . . An older man, who calls himself Mohammad, says he was injured in fighting four days ago, when the Americans attacked the office of Mr. Sadr in Najaf. But despite being shot in the thigh, and hit by shrapnel in the upper arm and back, he says he will fight, "God willing, until my last breath." . . . The Old City is perfect for street fighting: narrow alleys, densely-clustered concrete homes, plenty of nooks to provide cover from American helicopters or passing armored vehicles. But despite the danger, residents are out in the streets watching the fighting. When American jets flow low over the Shrine of Ali and fire rockets into the surrounding market areas, the locals run to the street corners to see the explosions. . . . The shrine to Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib has received some damage during the previous night's bombing. . . . Mahdi Army fighters - who now control the shrine and have a few gunmen posted inside the shrine complex - point to the gold-leaf dome and one golden minaret, where tiles have been damaged by flying shrapnel. Damage to the shrine is the one thing that could unify Shiites against the Americans, we have been warned by people who don't like the Mahdi Army. The courtyard of the shrine itself is littered with chunks of shrapnel, and Mahdi Army fighters show a piece of the bomb that they say dropped into the shrine complex. . . . The scene sort of reminds me of what I learned about the standoff at the Alamo in Texas grade school. The men - outnumbered and outgunned - are determined. They are being urged to adopt a religious fervor and fight to the end. A cleric on a loudspeaker tells the fighters to keep fighting. "God bless you. You are righteous citizens. You are the ones who stand up in the face of the evil forces. Don't give up. May God give you the strength to win victory against your enemy. God is Great, God is Great, God is Great." . . . In Baghdad, US military spokesmen claim to have killed 300 fighters over the past two days of fighting. We've seen hundreds more, and there are possibly thousands left in the shrine area and the cemetery. Getting rid of them all, finishing them off, and restoring full government control, as the Governor of Najaf is now calling for this week, could result in bloody street fighting, with hundreds of civilian casualties. . . . Already in the Old City, shrapnel and bullets from helicopter gunships have torn holes in concrete walls. Civilians show us holes in their walls, and the bullets and shrapnel fragments they have found on the floor. Some of their relatives are now being rushed to hospital. Others have treated themselves. One man is bleeding through his dishdasha. An improperly wound bandage is not stopping the blood. He ignores our call to take him to a hospital. He must check on his mother, whose house is nearby. . . . From Najaf, the road directly back to Baghdad is blocked. We take an alternate route through the central Iraqi city of Kufa, another Sadr bastion. There, an Iraqi police checkpoint that had been manned just the day before is abandoned. At the Kufa mosque - where Moqtada al-Sadr's speech that day will call on Muslims to fight against the Americans, "our enemies" - there are only Mahdi Army fighters, within full sight of the main road. It will be another 40 kilometers before we see another checkpoint manned by Iraqi police or US military. . . . We learn that since Thursday, fighting has also broken out in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, as well as in Basra, Nasiriyah, and Amara and other Shiite cities and towns. The Mahdi Army fighters say the uprising is just beginning.

posted by LoZo 3:28 PM