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Al Jazeera (English)
    Baghdad Burning Blog (by Riverbend, an Iraqi civilian girl)
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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Experience inside Najaf mosque fearsome
(CNN, August 19, 2004)
With U.S. and Iraqi forces surrounding the mosque, CNN producer Kianne Sadeq was allowed inside and later spoke with CNN correspondent John Vause about what she saw. . . . Now, the entire street, about 100 to 150 meters [109 to 164 yards] leading up to the Imam Ali Mosque is completely destroyed. All the shops. I mean, it's completely destroyed. . . . Windows are shattered. The pillars are broken. Stores are shut. . . . It is just a ghost land. All there is now is a large group of Mehdi Army, which occupies that area. And just before you get there, there are American tanks. . . . So we walked in, and once we walked into the mosque, we were cheered on, we were very well received by members of the Mehdi Army. ... They were cheering and chanting about everything they were doing. They were very proud to be in there and had absolutely no intentions of leaving. . . There were some women in there. Of course, a very few, maybe five or six. But there were some women in there. In fact, there were some children in there. . . . While you're in the mosque, you hear constant firing, rocket-propelled grenade fire, mortar fire. I mean, I'm not exactly sure about this, but all different kinds of loud firing constantly going on. It does not stop. ... It keeps going on and on and on and on. . . . The mosque seems to be OK, just some minor damage to the two pillars in the mosque. Minor damage, but nothing serious to the mosque. Everything outside of the mosque seems to be totaled. . . . around 4 or 5 in the evening, we attempted to go to the mosque, and there was an extreme amount of sniper fire. Extreme amount of sniper fire seems to be coming from both sides -- from the American side as well as the Iraqi side. And it's a very dangerous area to go through, because it seems like these people are not seeing who's coming by. . . . We were told by some people in the neighborhood that in fact there was a dead body that had been in its position for about three days and they could not move it out of the way because they could not risk going into that street and to take that body away because of the amount of sniper fire. We heard many, many shots. . . . We tried to go there again this morning, and once again we were stopped by a large amount of sniper fire. And it's just too dangerous to either walk or go in vehicles, because you don't know where these bullets are flying.

posted by LoZo 11:23 AM