Iraqis protest after US raid kills civilians

[dArKeR]

Hundreds of people in Baghdad have demonstrated outside a home raided by US forces three days ago, who were hunting for Saddam Hussein.

Five Iraqi civilians are believed to have been shot dead during the raid.

About 200 people, mostly tribesmen, rallied outside the Baghdad home of Emir Mohamad al Habeeb, the leader of Iraq's powerful Al Rabiya tribes.

The US still has not released any details of the raid at the Emir's home, but eyewitnesses say five civilians were killed when US troops opened fire on cars passing nearby.

The demonstrators demanded an apology.

But so far coalition spokesmen have said only that Taskforce 20, the special unit hunting for Saddam Hussein, was acting on information believed valid at the time.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s913777.htm

I'm dead give me an apology!
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Troops Turn Botched Saddam Raid Into A Massacre
By Robert Fisk
The Independent

Monday 28 July 2003

BAGHDAD - Obsessed with capturing Saddam Hussein, American soldiers
turned a botched raid on a house in the Mansur district of Baghdad
yesterday into a bloodbath, opening fire on scores of Iraqi civilians
in a crowded street and killing up to 11, including two children,
their mother and crippled father. At least one civilian car caught
fire, cremating its occupants.

The vehicle carrying the two children and their mother and father
was riddled by bullets as it approached a razor-wired checkpoint
outside the house.

Amid the fury generated among the largely middle-class residents of
Mansur - by ghastly coincidence, the killings were scarcely 40 metres
from the houses in which 16 civilians died when the Americans tried
to kill Saddam towards the end of the war in April - whatever
political advantages were gained by the killing of Saddam's sons have
been squandered. A doctor at the Yarmouk hospital, which received
four of the dead, turned on me angrily last night, shouting: "If an
American came to my emergency room, maybe I would kill him."

Two civilians, both believed to have been driving with their
families, were brought to the Yarmouk, one with abdominal wounds and
the other with "his brain outside of his head", according to another
doctor.

At the scene of the killings, there was pandemonium. While US
troops were loading the bullet-shattered cars on trucks - and trying
to stop cameramen filming the carnage - crowds screamed abuse at them.

One American soldier a few feet from me climbed into the seat of
his Humvee, threw his helmet on the floor of the vehicle and shouted:
"Shit! Shit!"

There was no doubt about the target: the home of Sheikh Rabia
Mohamed Habib, a prominent tribal leader who had met Saddam but who
was not even in his house when the Americans stormed it. One report
says they killed a guard as they entered.

"The Americans searched the house completely, very roughly," Sheikh
Habib said. "It seems they thought Saddam Hussein was inside."

It appears the killings started as the troops were searching the
building and as motorists approached the barbed wire which the
soldiers had placed without warning across the road. Witnesses said
the first car contained at least two men. "The second contained two
children about 10, their mother and their father who had been wounded
in the Iran-Iraq war - he was a cripple," a local shopkeeper told me.
"They all died. The man's legs were cut in half by the bullets," he
added. A third car then approached the Americans, who opened fire
again. One of the occupants fled, but the other two remained in the
vehicle and were killed.

When another car arrived US troops riddled it with more bullets and
it burst into flames. It is believed that two people were inside and
both were burnt to death. "The Americans didn't try to help the
civilians they had shot, not once," a witness said. "They let the car
burn and left the bodies where they lay, even the children. It was we
who had to take them to the hospitals."

Yet again, false informers, ill-trained American soldiers who
appeared to exercise no fire control and a lack of military planning
has created a tragedy among the people the Americans claimed to be
'liberating' from Saddam Hussein only 15 weeks ago. Last night, there
were reports from the southern city of Karbala that three men had
been shot dead by American troops during a demonstration.