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News, 26/03-02/04/03 (7) COLLATERAL DAMAGE * 'Many dead' in Baghdad attack * 13 killed in Karbala and Najaf raids * Raid on Mosul causes 50 plus casualties * In Baghdad, blood and bandages for the innocent * Peace activists confirm Iraqi hospital bombed * 20 civilians, including 11 children, killed by American and British air strike near Baghdad * 'You didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!' * Civilian shooting toll may climb * 15 of a family among 56 civilians killed: Pick-up blown up, Hilla town bombed * The proof: marketplace deaths were caused by a US missile * American missile hits maternity hospital, at least 25 civilians injured MURPHY'S LAW * Dozens hurt in friendly fire * 30 US Marines injured in friendly fire * Concern as Screaming Eagles crash five helicopters in one week: US military * Wounded British soldiers condemn US 'cowboy' pilot * Crew drown as US tank topples into Euphrates COLLATERAL DAMAGE http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2897117.stm * 'MANY DEAD' IN BAGHDAD ATTACK BBC, 28th March At least 50 civilians are believed to have been killed during an air raid on a Baghdad market, Iraqi authorities say. Graphic television pictures showed people scrabbling through rubble to reach the dead and injured amid the wreckage in the Shula residential area of the city. Reports of the attack came as coalition forces renewed night-time bombing across the Iraqi capital. On the ground, US-led forces were fighting for control of invasion routes in northern, central and southern Iraq. [.....] Correspondents in Baghdad say there is no clear information yet on what may have caused the destruction of al-Nasser market. Dr Osama Sakhari from al-Noor Hospital near the market told Reuters news agency he had counted 55 people killed and more than 47 wounded from Friday's attack. Arabic broadcasters in Qatar and Abu Dhabi each said more than 50 people were dead. They showed pictures of what they said were victims of the attack - mainly women, children and old people - as well as shots of mothers slapping themselves in grief. Abu Dhabi television said the devastation may have been caused by a US cruise missile. But US officials at the Central Command headquarters in Qatar told the BBC they had no details yet and suggested it may have been a misfired Iraqi missile. It is not known if there are any military installations in the area. The BBC's Paul Wood in Baghdad - whose reports are monitored by Iraqi officials - says the incident could be the largest single loss of life in the war. He says it will be a propaganda victory for the Iraqis and Baghdad residents will see it as a further example of civilian lives being taken recklessly by the US. Only two days ago, Iraqi officials said at least 14 civilians died when another shopping area in Baghdad was hit during a coalition air strike. They added that seven more were killed and 92 injured in overnight raids on Friday. The attacks included the first use of two satellite-guided "bunker-busting" bombs by the US military aimed at communications centres. http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Articles.asp?Article=47700&Sn=WORL * 13 KILLED IN KARBALA AND NAJAF RAIDS Gulf Daily News (The Voice of Bahrain), 28th March BAGHDAD: US-British air raids on the Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala south of Baghdad have left 13 people dead and 56 wounded, the head of Iraq's civil defence service said yesterday. In Najaf, six people died on Wednesday and six were hurt when the Al-Hussein housing area was hit and three more were hurt in a second raid on the city, said General Hatem Ali Al-Khalaf. In Karbala, a raid the same day left seven dead and 47 wounded, he added without saying if the casualties were civilians or soldiers. The information ministry announced a trip to Najaf, 150km from the capital, and Karbala, 70km away, but promptly cancelled it. The reporters were instead escorted to Yussufiyah, just south of Baghdad, where officials said eight people had died and 44 others been wounded in a US-British raid. A residential block for employees of the highways department was hit, officials said. A major battle between elite Iraqi and US troops was looming near Najaf yesterday as a massive column of Iraqi forces reportedly headed south to meet American soldiers advancing on Baghdad. The movement was reported after US army troops said they killed about 1,000 Iraqis in three days of fighting around Najaf. But Iraq denied yesterday the claim. "It's totally baseless," Iraqi armed forces spokesman Hazem Al Rawi told a Press conference. It was unclear whether the casualties reported by Khalaf were part of a toll given earlier yesterday by Health Minister Umid Medhat Mubarak, who said that more than 350 civilians had been killed and about 3,600 injured since the start of US-led military strikes on March 20. He also said 36 Baghdad residents were made "martyrs" by the previous day's US and British air strikes. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/28/1048653831208.html * RAID ON MOSUL CAUSES 50 PLUS CASUALTIES Sydney Morning Herald, 28th March Doha, AFP: A heavy air raid by US and British coalition forces killed or wounded more than 50 civilians in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul early today, al-Jazeera television reported from the scene. The station's correspondent said seven houses were destroyed in the unidentified district in the 6am (1400 AEDT) raid, adding many inhabitants were fleeing. They were enraged because no military targets were in the vicinity. A local resident told the channel that "at least 50 children" were hit, along with an "incalculable" number of women. Destroyed houses and trucks filled with bags and baggage were shown leaving the scene. Mosul, a city of some 300,000 in a majority Kurdish region, has been bombarded several times by the coalition fighting to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, according to al Jazeera, but this was the first report of heavy casualties. http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=392161 * IN BAGHDAD, BLOOD AND BANDAGES FOR THE INNOCENT by Robert Fisk in the Baghdad suburb of Shu'ale The Independent, 30th March The piece of metal is only a foot high, but the numbers on it hold the clue to the latest atrocity in Baghdad. At least 62 civilians had died by yesterday afternoon, and the coding on that hunk of metal contains the identity of the culprit. The Americans and British were doing their best yesterday to suggest that an Iraqi anti-aircraft missile destroyed those dozens of lives, adding that they were "still investigating" the carnage. But the coding is in Western style, not in Arabic. And many of the survivors heard the plane. In the Al-Noor hospital yesterday morning, there were appalling scenes of pain and suffering. A two-year-old girl, Saida Jaffar, swaddled in bandages, a tube into her nose, another into her stomach. All I could see of her was her forehead, two small eyes and a chin. Beside her, blood and flies covered a heap of old bandages and swabs. Not far away, lying on a dirty bed, was three-year-old Mohamed Amaid, his face, stomach, hands and feet all tied tightly in bandages. A great black mass of congealed blood lay at the bottom of his bed. This is a hospital without computers, with only the most primitive of X-ray machines. But the missile was guided by computers and that vital shard of fuselage was computer-coded. It can be easily verified and checked by the Americans if they choose to do so. It reads: 30003-704ASB 7492. The letter "B" is scratched and could be an "H". This is believed to be the serial number. It is followed by a further code which arms manufacturers usually refer to as the weapon's "Lot" number. It reads: MFR 96214 09. The piece of metal bearing the codings was retrieved only minutes after the missile exploded on Friday evening, by an old man whose home is only 100 yards from the 6ft crater. Even the Iraqi authorities do not know that it exists. The missile sprayed hunks of metal through the crowds mainly women and children and through the cheap brick walls of local homes, amputating limbs and heads. Three brothers, the eldest 21 and the youngest 12, for example, were cut down inside the living room of their brick hut on the main road opposite the market. Two doors away, two sisters were killed in an identical manner. "We have never seen anything like these wounds before," Dr Ahmed, an anaesthetist at the Al-Noor hospital told me later. "These people have been punctured by dozens of bits of metal." He was right. One old man I visited in a hospital ward had 24 holes in the back of his legs and buttocks, some as big as pound coins. An X-ray photograph handed to me by one of his doctors clearly showed at least 35 slivers of metal still embedded in his body Like the Sha'ab highway massacre on Thursday when at least 21 Iraqi civilians were killed or burned to death by two missiles fired by an American jet Shu'ale is a poor, Shia Muslim neighbourhood of single-storey corrugated iron and cement food stores and two-room brick homes. These are the very people whom Messrs Bush and Blair expected to rise in insurrection against Saddam. But the anger in the slums was directed at the Americans and British yesterday, by old women and bereaved fathers and brothers who spoke without hesitation and without the presence of the otherwise ubiquitous government "minders". "This is a crime," a woman muttered at me angrily. "Yes, I know they say they are targeting the military. But can you see soldiers here? Can you see missiles?" The answer has to be in the negative. A few journalists did report seeing a Scud missile on a transporter near the Sha'ab area on Thursday and there were anti-aircraft guns around Shu'ale. At one point yesterday morning, I heard an American jet race over the scene of the massacre and just caught sight of a ground-to-air missile that was vainly chasing it, its contrail soaring over the slum houses in the dark blue sky. An anti-aircraft battery manufactured circa 1942 also began firing into the air a few blocks away. But even if the Iraqis do position or move their munitions close to the suburbs, does that justify the Americans firing into those packed civilian neighbourhoods, into areas which they know contain crowded main roads and markets and during the hours of daylight? Last week's attack on the Sha'ab highway was carried out on a main road at midday during a sandstorm when dozens of civilians are bound to be killed, whatever the pilot thought he was aiming at. "I had five sons and now I have only two and how do I know that even they will survive?" a bespectacled middle-aged man said in the bare concrete back room of his home yesterday. "One of my boys was hit in the kidneys and heart. His chest was full of shrapnel; it came right through the windows. Now all I can say is that I am sad that I am alive." A neighbour interrupted to say that he saw the plane with his own eyes. "I saw the side of the aircraft and I noticed it changed course after it fired the missile." Plane-spotting has become an all-embracing part of life in Baghdad. And to the reader who thoughtfully asked last week if I could see with my own eyes the American aircraft over the city, I have to say that in at least 65 raids by aircraft, I have not despite my tiger-like eyes actually seen one plane. I hear them, especially at night, but they are flying at supersonic speed; during the day, they are usually above the clouds of black smoke that wash over the city. I have, just once, spotted a cruise missile the cruise or Tomahawk rockets fly at only around 400mph and I saw it passing down a boulevard towards the Tigris river. But the grey smoke that shoots out of the city like the fingers of a dead hand is unmistakeable, along with the concussion of sound. And when they can be found the computer codings on the bomb fragments reveal their own story. As the codes on the Shu'ale missile surely must. All morning yesterday, the Americans were at it again, blasting away at targets on the perimeter of Baghdad where the outer defences of the city are being dug by Iraqi troops and in the centre. An air-fired rocket exploded on the roof of the Iraqi Ministry of Information, destroying a clutch of satellite dishes. One office building from which I was watching the bombardment literally swayed for several seconds during one long raid. Even in the Al-Noor hospital, the walls were shaking yesterday as the survivors of the market slaughter struggled for survival. Hussein Mnati is 52 and just stared at me his face pitted with metal fragments as bombs blasted the city. A 20-year-old man was sitting up in the next bed, the blood-soaked stump of his left arm plastered over with bandages. Only 12 hours ago, he had a left arm, a left hand, fingers. Now he blankly recorded his memories. "I was in the market and I didn't feel anything," he told me. "The rocket came and I was to the right of it and then an ambulance took me to hospital." Whether or not his amputation was dulled by painkillers, he wanted to talk. When I asked him his name, he sat upright in bed and shouted at me: "My name is Saddam Hussein Jassem." NO URL (sent to list) * PEACE ACTIVISTS CONFIRM IRAQI HOSPITAL BOMBED by Charles J. Hanley Associated Press, 30th March AMMAN, Jordan: Bruised and bleeding, in need of medical care, the Americans stranded in Iraq's western desert approached the mud-brick town and found the hospital destroyed by bombs. "Why? Why?" a doctor demanded of them. "Why did you Americans bomb our children's hospital?" Scores of Iraqi townspeople crowded around. The American peace activists' account was the first confirmation of a report last week that a hospital in Rutbah was bombed Wednesday, with dead and injured. The travelers said they saw no significant Iraqi military presence near the hospital or elsewhere in Rutbah. The doctor did not discuss casualties, the Americans said. U.S. Central Command said Sunday it had no knowledge of a hospital bombing in Rutbah. The U.S. military has said it is doing its best to avoid civilian casualties in its campaign to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. For the battered band of peace activists, recounting their nerve-jarring exit from Iraq on Sunday, it was one of the worst moments in 10 days of war. That exit had begun at 9:15 a.m. Saturday, when a dozen foreigners - eight American and one Irish member of the Iraq Peace Team, and three unaffiliated Japanese and South Korean activists - set out from Baghdad on the 300-mile trek to the western border with Jordan, through a nation at war. Members of the antiwar group have shuttled in and out of the Iraqi capital for months to take part in vigils, small demonstrations and other activities to protest U.S. war plans. Since March 20, they have borne witness and compiled reports on the U.S. bombing of Baghdad. Some who left Saturday had been ordered out by jittery Iraqi bureaucrats for a minor infraction - taking snapshots in Baghdad without an official escort. Others said they left to get out the story of the Baghdad bombing. The journey was a straight shot through the gritty western desert, the Badiyat ash-Sham, over a divided superhighway eerily empty of traffic. American special forces and warplanes have been staging raids and air attacks on isolated targets across the west. "I'd say we passed up to 20 bombed-out, burned-out vehicles along the way," said Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, 22, a student from Devon, Pa. Four were Iraqi tanks and other military vehicles, he said, but the others appeared to be civilian, including a bus and an ambulance. "We had to detour around a bombed-out bridge, dodge lightpoles down across the road," said Shane Claiborne, 27, a community organizer from Philadelphia. Three times the group - in a big white GMC Suburban and two yellow taxis - spotted bomb explosions nearby. The last, in early afternoon, occurred near the far-western town of Rutbah. Their Iraqi drivers' nerves were fraying as they sped toward Jordan at 80 mph. "He kept going faster, faster," Betty Scholten, 69, of Mount Rainier, Md., said of her driver. Suddenly the lagging taxi, pushing to catch up, blew a tire. It careened, spun out of control and plunged down a ditch, landing on its side. "It was a heavy hit," Claiborne said. All five men inside were hurt. "We pulled each other up through the side doors." A passing car eventually braked to a halt. The Iraqis inside got out, helped the injured into their vehicle and drove back toward Rutbah and a hospital. Along the way, Claiborne said, he spotted the contrails of a jet streaking toward the car. The Iraqis frantically waved a white sheet out a window, and the plane veered off, he said. In poor, remote Rutbah, a burned-out oil tanker truck sat in the road, and the customs building and communications center had been wrecked by bombing. When they reached the hospital, they saw it, too, had been bombed, its roof caved in. Claiborne said an English-speaking Iraqi doctor took them to a small nearby clinic, and 100 or so townspeople then gathered around the building. The men were worried, but the doctor told them, "We'll take care of you. Muslim, Christian, whatever, we are all brothers and sisters,'" Claiborne recalled. The staff tended to them, stitching up a scalp laceration for group leader Cliff Kindy, 53, of North Manchester, Ind., and doing their best for the worst hurt, Weldon Nisly, 57, of Seattle, who suffered cracked ribs and similar injuries. The two other carloads, missing the third, eventually doubled back and found the men in Rutbah. All then ventured onward the final 80 miles to the Jordan border, and then Amman, where Nisly was admitted to a hospital early Sunday. As they left Rutbah, said Wilson-Hartgrove's wife, Leah, 22, the villagers "said to us, 'Please tell them about the hospital.'" http://www.shianews.com/hi/middle_east/news_id/0000767.php * 20 CIVILIANS, INCLUDING 11 CHILDREN, KILLED BY AMERICAN AND BRITISH AIR STRIKE NEAR BAGHDAD by Ibrahim Khalili Shia News (story from AFP), 31st March Twenty civilians, including 11 children, were killed on Saturday when a night time air raid by American and British warplanes hit a farm near Baghdad. The dead also included seven women and two men belonging to five families. Another 10 people were wounded in the attack, according to relatives who survived the bombardment, which destroyed three homes in the Al-Janabiin suburb on the edge of Baghdad. Neighbours told an AFP journalist that two missiles fired by coalition warplanes Saturday night caught five sleeping families living on the farm. The victims have already been buried according to Muslim tradition but the smell of death still permeates the farm. The bombing also cost the life of several of the farm's animals. Carcasses of cows, dogs, sheep and chickens lay motionless at the scene of the bombing. "Five children were turned into human torches in this house because of the gas cylinders inside," one of the two survivors told the journalistr, wondering how God spared him while four other family members were wounded. "Their bodies protected me because I was in a corner." "That is Bush's democracy. They want us to welcome them with flowers. Look what they've done to our families," a neighbour said holding missile debris in his hands. AFP journalists have witnessed five such incidents in which civilians were the primary victims of a coalition strike, reporting at least 70 dead and dozens of wounded. US and British war planners have repeatedly declared their intent to minimise civilian casualities and accuse the Iraqi regime of using civilians as human shields. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/dailybriefing/story/0,12965,927233,00.html * 'You didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!' by Brian Whitaker The Guardian, 1st April [....] Meanwhile it has emerged - as a result of detective work on the internet by a Guardian reader - that the explosion in a Baghdad market which killed more than 60 people last Friday was indeed caused by a cruise missile and not an Iraqi anti-aircraft rocket as the US has suggested. A metal fragment found at the scene by British journalist Robert Fisk carried various markings, including "MFR 96214 09". This, our reader pointed out in an email, is a manufacturer's identification number known as a "cage code". Cage codes can be looked up on the internet (www.gidm.dlis.dla.mil), and keying in the number 96214 traces the fragment back to a plant in McKinney, Texas, owned by the Raytheon Company. Raytheon, whose headquarters are in Lexington, Massachusetts, aspires "to be the most admired defence and aerospace systems supplier through world-class people and technology", according to its website (www.raytheon.com). It makes a vast array of military equipment, including the AGM-129 cruise missile which is launched from B-52 bombers. [.....] http://www.msnbc.com/news/893527.asp?0cv=CA00 * CIVILIAN SHOOTING TOLL MAY CLIMB MSNBC, 1st April April 1 ‹ U.S. troops shot and killed at least seven Iraqi civilians ‹ some of them children ‹ in a vehicle at a checkpoint Monday in southern Iraq when the driver did not stop as ordered, U.S. Central Command said. Later, on Tuesday morning, U.S. Marines shot and killed an unarmed Iraqi who drove his pickup truck at speed toward another checkpoint in the south. THE FIRST INCIDENT took place Monday at a checkpoint manned by soldiers of the Army¹s 3rd Infantry Division on a highway between Karbala and Najaf, U.S. Central Command said in a statement Monday night. When the van failed to stop, soldiers fired warning shots and then shots into the vehicle¹s engine, neither of which stopped it, the statement said. Monday¹s shooting illustrated the difficulty U.S. forces face in making split-second decisions about whether approaching Iraqis are friends or foes. The 3rd Infantry lost four soldiers Saturday at another checkpoint when an Iraqi soldier dressed as a civilian detonated a car bomb. A Marine involved in the second incident, which occurred Tuesday morning outside the southern town of Shatra, told Reuters that he feared that he and his compatriots were also being attacked by a suicide bomber. Marines the white truck with with bullets after it sped toward their roadblock on the main highway near An Nasiriyah, apparently oblivious to barbed wire strewn across the road. The driver was killed, and his passenger was badly wounded. The truck was not loaded, and neither of the men was in uniform or armed, Marines said. Central Command said in its statement that a total of 13 women and children were in the van that was attacked Monday near Karbala. But The Washington Post, whose reporter is traveling with the 3rd Infantry, said that 15 passengers were in the van and that 10 were killed, five of them children who appeared to be younger than age 5. One of the wounded was a man not expected to live, the Post reported in its Tuesday editions. The newspaper described the vehicle as a four-wheel-drive Toyota crammed with the Iraqis¹ personal belongings. Central Command said initial reports indicated that the soldiers followed the rules of engagement to protect themselves. ³In light of recent terrorist attacks by the Iraqi regime, the soldiers exercised considerable restraint to avoid the unnecessary loss of life,² the statement said. The Post report, however, quoted a 3rd Infantry Division captain as saying the checkpoint crew did not fire warning shots quickly enough. The Post described a captain watching the incident through binoculars and ordering the soldiers by radio to fire a warning shot first and then shoot a 7.62mm machine-gun round into the vehicle¹s radiator. When the vehicle kept coming, the captain ordered the soldiers to ³stop him!² About a dozen shots of 25mm cannon fire were heard from one or more of the platoon¹s Bradley fighting vehicles, the Post said. The captain then shouted over the radio at the platoon leader, ³You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn¹t fire a warning shot soon enough!² according to the Post. ³It was the most horrible thing I¹ve ever seen, and I hope I never see it again,² Sgt. Mario Manzano, 26, an Army medic with Bravo Company of the division¹s 3rd Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, told the Post. U.S. medics evacuated survivors of the shooting to U.S. lines south of Karbala, according to the Post. One woman was unhurt. Another, who had superficial head wounds, was flown by helicopter to a U.S. field hospital when it was learned that she was pregnant, the Post said. U.S. troops gave three survivors permission to return to the vehicle and recover the bodies of their loved ones, the newspaper said. Medics gave the group 10 body bags, the newspaper reported, and U.S. officials offered an unspecified amount of money to compensate them. A top-ranking Pentagon official said Monday night that the troops at the checkpoint ³absolutely did the right thing.² ³They tried to warn the vehicle to stop. It did not stop,² Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on PBS¹s ³News Hour with Jim Lehrer.² ³And it was unusual that that vehicle would be full of only women and that the driver was a woman. So we need to find out why it was that they were acting the way they did.² Iraq has emphasized civilian casualties to fuel opposition to the war, including organizing a tour for foreign correspondents last week of a Baghdad market it says was hit by a U.S. cruise missile. Iraq¹s ambassador to Russia, Abbas Khalaf, said Monday that 589 Iraqi non-combatants had been killed in the war and that 4,500 others had been wounded. There is no way to confirm or disprove the reports. With many troops jittery after Saturday¹s suicide attack, U.S. officers said they were being especially careful as they made contact with civilians whose political loyalties were unclear. ³A civilian is always a threat until proven innocent,² said Lt. Jason Davis of the 101st Airborne Division. ³This is combat. We are in a hostile country. Even if we are sitting on a corner and eating food, this is still combat.² The suicide attack near Najaf raised a new threat for U.S. troops, who already face guerrilla-style resistance from Iraqi paramilitary fighters who wear the same clothing as civilians and can melt into villages after staging lightning raids. In the small town of Kifl, where hundreds of Iraqis were killed in vicious street fighting, wary U.S. troops tried to balance friendliness and firmness Sunday as they fanned out to do house-to-house searches. Civilians and U.S. soldiers eyed one another warily around town. The Iraqis waved white flags or held their hands in the air when they ventured out for water or to check on their families. ³Security is the Number 1 priority, but you do whatever you can to be friendly. You don¹t want to be mean,² Sgt. Malcolm Brown said as he waited for a family of 12, including a man in a wheelchair, to approach his checkpoint. ³You have to be stern but friendly at the same time.² There is ample reason for caution. Troops found rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles in many homes in Kifl, but the combatants had melted away. Two prisoners were captured without a fight, including an Iraqi army major. The U.S. effort to win Iraqi hearts and minds has clearly been weakened by a dearth of interpreters. Soldiers bark orders in English or use sign language to tell civilians to show them what they are carrying inside their bags. Davis, whose unit had just found a booby-trapped AK-47 in one home, said the dual goals of ensuring security of his men and getting on with civilians posed a delicate balancing act. ³It¹s a good cop-bad cop scenario. The troops have to be the bad guys, whose only focus is their own security. And the leadership has to show the civilians a lot of respect,² he said, adding that he approached civilians bowing, touching his heart with his hand and offering them water. The caution, it appears, cuts both ways. Iraqi civilians here say they have not had major problems with the searches, but they worry about how soldiers will treat women ‹ an important cultural consideration in a Muslim country. And many are deeply suspicious of the invaders. ³The Iraqis do not love foreigners coming to our country with their guns,² said Nasir Hasnawi, a middle-aged man who said he had fled his home in Baghdad to stay with relatives, only to find this town rocked by major clashes. ³They say they will leave when they change the government, but we do not believe them. I think they want our oil.² The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. http://www.dawn.com/2003/04/02/top15.htm * 15 OF A FAMILY AMONG 56 CIVILIANS KILLED: PICK-UP BLOWN UP, HILLA TOWN BOMBED Dawn, 2nd April HILLA, April 1, AFP: Thirty-three people, including women and children, died and 310 were wounded in a coalition bombing on the outskirts of the farming town of Hilla, 80 kilometres south of the capital on Tuesday , local hospital director Murtada Abbas said. He was speaking at the Hilla hospital where a large number of children lay wounded under blankets on the floor due to a shortage of beds. Fifteen members of one family were killed nearby late Monday when their pickup truck was blown up by a rocket from a US Apache helicopter in the region of Haidariya near Hilla, the sole survivor of the attack said. Razek al-Kazem al-Khafaji, sitting among 15 coffins in the local hospital, said he lost his wife, six children, his father, his mother, his three brothers and their wives. The British and US air strikes on Baghdad accounted for a further 19 people dead and more than 100 wounded since Monday evening, Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf said on the 13th day of the US-led attempt to unseat Saddam Hussein and disarm Iraq. US troops admitted killing seven women and children when they opened fire on Monday on a civilian vehicle at a military checkpoint manned by the US Army's Third Infantry Division at Najaf. Reports of coalition forces killing dozens of Iraqi civilians on Tuesday stoked growing international unease at the US-led war. Minister Sahaf said U.S.-led air raids over the past day had killed a total of 56 civilians throughout the country. Iraq has put the total civilian deaths to date at 653 but there was no way to independently verify this figure. Baghdad has issued no numbers of its military casualties. Reuters reporters taken by Iraqi officials to a hospital in the town of Hilla saw 11 bodies, apparently civilians. Residents said they were killed when U.S. bombs hit the residential area. Sahaf said nine of the dead were children. [.....] http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=393066 * THE PROOF: MARKETPLACE DEATHS WERE CAUSED BY A US MISSILE by Cahal Milmo The Independent, 2nd April An American missile, identified from the remains of its serial number, was pinpointed yesterday as the cause of the explosion at a Baghdad market on Friday night that killed at least 62 Iraqis. The codes on the foot-long shrapnel shard, seen by the Independent correspondent Robert Fisk at the scene of the bombing in the Shu'ale district, came from a weapon manufactured in Texas by Ray- theon, the world's biggest producer of "smart" armaments. The identification of the missile as American is an embarrassing blow to Washington and London as they try to match their promises of minimal civilian casualties with the reality of precision bombing. Both governments have suggested the Shu'ale bombing - and the explosion at another Baghdad market that killed at least 14 people last Wednesday - were caused by ageing Iraqi anti-aircraft missiles. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said yesterday it was "increasingly probable" the first explosion was down to the Iraqis and Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, suggested on BBC's Newsnight last night that President Saddam sacked his head of air defences because they were not working properly. But investigations by The Independent show that the missile - thought to be either a Harm (High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile) device, or a Paveway laser-guided bomb - was sold by Raytheon to the procurement arm of the US Navy. The American military has confirmed that a navy EA-6B "Prowler" jet, based on the USS Kittyhawk, was in action over the Iraqi capital on Friday and fired at least one Harm missile to protect two American fighters from a surface-to-air missile battery. The Pentagon and Raytheon, which last year had sales of $16.8bn (£10.6bn), declined to comment on the serial number evidence last night. A US Defence Department spokeswoman said: "Our investigations are continuing. We cannot comment on serial numbers which may or may not have been found at the scene." An official Washington source went further, claiming that the shrapnel could have been planted at the scene by the Iraqi regime. On Saturday, Downing Street disclosed intelligence that linked the Wednesday attack - and by implication Friday's killings - on Iraqi missiles being fired without radar guidance and falling back to earth. The Prime Minister's spokesman said: "A large number of surface-to-air missiles have been malfunctioning and many have failed to hit their targets and have fallen back on to Baghdad. We are not saying definitively that these explosions were caused by Iraqi missiles but people should approach this with due scepticism." The Anglo-American claims were undermined by the series of 25 digits and letters on the piece of fuselage shown to Mr Fisk by an elderly resident of Shu'ale who lived 100 yards from the site of the 6ft crater made by the explosion. The numbers on the fragment - retrieved from the scene and not shown to the Iraqi authorities - read: "30003-704ASB7492". The letter "B" was partially obscured by scratches and may be an "H". It was followed by a second code: "MFR 96214 09." An online database of suppliers maintained by the Defence Logistics Information Service, part of the Department of Defence, showed that the reference MFR 96214 was the identification or "cage" number of a Raytheon plant in the city of McKinney, Texas. The 30003 reference refers to the Naval Air Systems Command, the procurement agency responsible for furnishing the US Navy's air force with its weaponry. The Pentagon refused to disclose which weapon was designated by the remaining letters and numbers, although defence experts said the information could be found within seconds from the Nato database of all items of military hardware operated across the Alliance, "from a nuclear bomb to a bath plug", as one put it. Raytheon, which also produces the Patriot anti-missile system and the Tomahawk cruise missile, lists its Harms and its latest Paveway III laser-guided bombs, marketed with the slogan "One bomb, one target", as among its most accurate weaponry. The company's sales description for its anti-radar missile says: "Harm was designed with performance and quality in mind. In actual field usage, Harm now demonstrates reliability four times better than specification. No modern weapons arsenal is complete without Harm in its inventory." Faced with apparent proof that one of its missiles had been less accurate than specification, Raytheon was more coy on the capabilities of its products. A spokeswoman at the company's headquarters in Tucson, Arizona, said: "All questions relating to the use of our products in the field are to be handled by the appropriate military authority." Defence experts said the damage caused at Shu'ale was consistent with that of Paveway or, more probably, a Harm weapon, which carries a warhead designed to explode into thousands of aluminium fragments and has a range of 80km. Despite its manufacturer's claims, it also has a record of unreliability when fired at a target which "disappears" if, as the Iraqi forces do, the target's operators switch their radar signal rapidly on and off. Nick Cook, of Jane's Defence Weekly, said: "The problem with Harms is that they can be seduced away from their targets by any sort of curious transmission. They are meant to have corrected that but there have been problems." During the Kosovo conflict four years ago, a farmer and his daughter were badly injured when a missile exploded in their village. A shard of the casing was found near by with a reference very similar to that found in Baghdad: "30003 704AS4829 MFP 96214." The American navy confirmed that one of its Prowler jets, which is used to jam enemy radar, had been over an unspecified area of Baghdad on Friday night. A pool reporter on the carrier USS Kittyhawk was told that the Prowler squadron had fired its first Harm on Friday evening in response to an air-defence unit that was threatening two F/A-18 Hornet jets. Lieutenant Rob Fluck told the journalist that the crew had not seen where their missile had landed. http://www.shianews.com/hi/middle_east/news_id/0000772.php * AMERICAN MISSILE HITS MATERNITY HOSPITAL, AT LEAST 25 CIVILIANS INJURED by Ali Hamza Shia News, 2nd April American missiles hit a Red Crescent maternity hospital in Baghdad and other civilian buildings on Wednesday, killing several people and wounding at least 25, according to the Reuters news agency. At least three doctors and nurses working at the hospital were wounded in the blasts. Among the wounded were patients who had come to hospital for help, Reuters reported. One patient who had come to see a doctor, was hit requiring his leg to be amputated. Witnesses said several Iraqis were also killed in strikes on civilian buildings and a trade fair. Residents told a Reuters correspondent that U.S. planes raided the Mansour area, firing at least three missiles. They hit the hospital, the nearby Baghdad trade center complex and buildings housing the Pharmacist and Teachers' Unions. "There were air raids. Some 25 people who work and live in the area were wounded. Three of our Red Crescent staff were also wounded. We brought all the wounded in our ambulances to two hospitals," Red Crescent official Abdel-Hameed Salim told Reuters at Baghdad's al-Iskan hospital. Many of the wounded received first aid at the emergency ward of Iskan hospital while some were immediately taken to theater for surgery. The Pentagon has not commented on the claims while U.S. military spokesman Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told reporters in Qatar: "I am not aware of the Red Crescent report, so I cannot address it." Colin Powel also said he was unaware of the incident when a reporter asked him for his comments during a press conference in Turkey. MURPHY'S LAW http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3300954&thesection=news&t hesubsection=world * 30 US MARINES INJURED IN FRIENDLY FIRE by Cahal Milmo New Zealand Herald, 29th March Coalition commanders have ordered an urgent review of measures to prevent "friendly fire" after a string of deaths and injuries. Yesterday, dozens of US Marines were injured when they fired on one another in a friendly fire clash around Nasiriyah. ITV correspondent James Mates reported: "It happened late last night. There was a very heavy firefight going on, which we could hear from our position. "A small group of Iraqis had gone effectively around the side of the American advance and started attacking the less well defended logistics and command positions in the rear. "Two American forces were detailed to deal with this threat. They both moved towards it, but ended up fighting each other, very heavy fire coming in from light armoured vehicles on the one side, and a group of troops on the other, and the ones not in the armoured vehicles coming off much the worse. "We have 30 wounded, two very seriously, though they are both expected to survive, but it has badly hit this battalion that we are with here, because they know that effectively all these casualties were from their own men." An AFP correspondent saw at least six vehicles destroyed, including three truck transporters, two Humvee all-terrain vehicles and one truck-mounted crane. Earlier, a British tank crew was killed in an apparent coalition air strike and an American F 16 fired on a Patriot missile battery. Attention was focusing on the Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) boxes carried by all British and American aircraft, which send a unique encoded signal designed to warn allied forces of their presence. Lieutenant Mark Kitchens, a US military spokesman, said: "There is an investigation to identify procedural changes to ensure the safety of our air crews and Patriot crews in combat situations." Two RAF air crew became the first victims of friendly fire in the war when their Tornado GR4 was blown apart over Kuwait by a Patriot battery which had identified the jet as an Iraqi missile. American Central Command in Qatar confirmed similarities between the Tornado incident and that involving the F-16, which attacked after the Patriot battery locked its radar on the plane. http://www.haveeru.com.mv/english/ * CONCERN AS SCREAMING EAGLES CRASH FIVE HELICOPTERS IN ONE WEEK: US MILITARY Haaveru Daily (Maldives), 30th March SOUTHWEST IRAQ - Five helicopters from the US army's elite air assault division have crashed in Iraq during less than a week of flying, military officials said Sunday, raising concern among the pilots over the treacherous Iraqi desert conditions. In the most serious incidents, two of the 101st Airborne Division's prized Apache Longbow attack helicopters crashed while trying to land within the secure confines of their base in southwestern Iraq during their first combat mission on Friday night. Although the four crew on board were not seriously injured, a senior instructing pilot with the division, Chief Warrant Officer Ted Hazen, said both of the 30-million-dollar Apaches were write offs. "We'll take what we can from them -- the computers, wheels and anything else that is servicable -- but they will be sheet metal after this," Hazen told AFP as he stood within 500 metres (yards) of one of the wrecks. Two Kiowa Warriors, smaller helicopters used for scouting, security and urban combat, also crash landed at their base, the division's aviation brigade commander, Colonel Greg Gass, said. Although none of the people on board were seriously injured, Kiowa Warrior pilot Matt Harris said the helicopters would take about a month to repair. One helicopter believed to be a troop-carrying Black Hawk belonging to the division's 159th aviation brigade also crashed in southwest Iraq over the past week, according to Gass. Pilots within the 101st, known as the "Screaming Eagles" and regarded as the army's premier helicopter attack division, conceded that the rate of accidents in their first week of Iraqi operations was unacceptable. "It's a high number," Gass said, adding that "adjustments" had been made in a bid to prevent further accidents. Gass and pilots at the forward operating base blamed the dusty desert conditions for the accidents, with the helicopters' advanced technological systems unable to help when they attempt to land. "The rotor blades kick up that dust so when it gets down you don't have any ground reference," Gass, who is an Apache pilot, said. "It's very easy to tip the aircraft... my biggest concern is accidents, more so than the enemy." Hazen, from the aviation brigade's 2nd Battalion to which the two Apache wrecks belonged, said the accidents had raised pilots' awareness about the dangers involved in landing, not just flying in combat. "It was sobering for the most part," Hazen said. "You know what can happen -- I think a lot more people are thinking about that. "I have been doing this a long time and I can tell you the pucker (fear) factor is way up there every time I come in" to land. Hazen described the dust that rises up in the air when the helicopters attempt to land as "like taking a bag of flour and throwing it onto the ground". "When you land you go into the cloud at the critical moment. It's probably the most dangerous thing we do." However senior brass hinted that lack of experience and organisation, rather than simply weather, also contributed to the accidents. Gass said the message had been sent throughout the aviation brigade to ensure pilots did not have to land with a tail wind, which blows the dust forward into the pilots' range of sight. "We have adjusted some of that to make it that everybody can land into the wind," he said. And the commander of the 101st's 6th Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Chuck Fields, said the pilots of his Black Hawk fleet had not had any major problems because they were more used to landing in difficult conditions compared with Apache pilots. "Our guys have a little bit more experience than the other guys because we have to land. We don't have a choice. Our mission is always to land while the Apaches don't have to," Fields said. Black Hawks often carry soldiers into battle and pick them up behind enemy lines while Apaches are attack helicopters that fire Hellfire missiles and other weaponry from a distance without having to touch down. The 101st's only major reported combat mission of the war so far has been an attack near the southwestern city of Karbala on the Medina Division of Iraq's Republican Guard, which officials said killed more than 55 enemy soldiers. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=392457 * WOUNDED BRITISH SOLDIERS CONDEMN US 'COWBOY' PILOT The Independent, 31st March British soldiers injured when a US "tankbuster" aircraft attacked their convoy, killing one of their comrades, hit out angrily at the "cowboy" pilot today. Troops wounded in Friday's attack accused the A-10 Thunderbolt pilot of "incompetence and negligence" while others privately called for a manslaughter prosecution. The comments came as America's most senior military official vowed to make it his quest to stop future "friendly fire" tragedies. General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apologised for the deadly error by the A-10 in southern Iraq. He told BBC1's Breakfast With Frost: "It's the absolute saddest tragedy that any of us can experience. "I don't think we have to live with situations like that, and one of my jobs has to be to ensure that we get the resources and the technical means to ensure that in the future this never, never happens again. And that will be my quest." But the crews of the two British forward reconnaissance Scimitars which were attacked by the A-10 could not contain their anger. Lance Corporal of Horse Steven Gerrard, speaking from his bed on the RFA Argus in the Gulf, said: "I can command my vehicle. I can keep it from being attacked. What I have not been trained to do is look over my shoulder to see whether an American is shooting at me." LCoH Gerrard, the commander of the leading vehicle, described to Patrick Barkham of The Times how the deadly A-10 attack began. The pilot made two swoops. "I will never forget that noise as long as I live. It is a noise I never want to hear again," he said. "There was no gap between the bullets. I heard it and I froze. The next thing I knew the turret was erupting with white light everywhere, heat and smoke." He added: "I'll never forget that A-10. He was about 50 metres off the ground. He circled, because he can turn on a 10 pence. "He came back around. He was no more than 1,000 metres away when he started his attack run. He was about 500 metres away when he started firing." On the back of one of the engineers' vehicles there was a Union Jack. "It's about 18 inches wide by about 12 inches. For him to fire his weapons I believe he had to look through his magnified optics. How he could not see that Union Jack I don't know." Packed with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, as well as grenades, rifle rounds and flammable diesel fuel tanks, the front two Scimitars exploded into flames. One of their comrades, Lance Corporal of Horse, Matty Hull, 25, was killed. LCoH Gerrard also criticised the A-10 for shooting when there were civilians close by. He said: "There was a boy of about 12 years old. He was no more than 20 metres away when the Yank opened up. "He had absolutely no regard for human life. I believe he was a cowboy. There were four or five that I noticed earlier and this one had broken off and was on his own when he attacked us. He'd just gone out on a jolly." He added: "I'm curious about what's going to happen to the pilot. "He's killed one of my friends and he's killed him on the second run." Trooper Chris Finney, 18, added: "All the wagons have markings to say they are Coalition. I don't know why he shot a second time, he was that close. "To be honest, I think they are just ignorant. I don't know if they haven't been trained or are just trigger happy." Another of the injured, Lieutenant Alex MacEwen, 25, added: "A mistake has happened but too many things suggest it was down to pure incompetence and negligence." Trooper Joe Woodgate, 19, the driver of the Scimitar in which gunner LCoH Hull was killed walked away with holes in his bullet-proof vest and torn clothes. He told Audrey Gillan of The Guardian: "I don't suppose they have learned much from the first war. I can tell what an American tank looks like from every direction. "It was the most irresponsible thing in the world. They didn't know what was going on. We were just getting on with our mission and they were messing around in the skies and saw us and said 'let's get ourselves a couple of wagons, that'll be one to tell the lads when we get back to the base'. "How come somebody who is a top-notch Thunderbolt pilot can't tell what a British tank looks like. I think someone in the Pentagon or somewhere needs to sort something out there." The reporter said some soldiers were also calling for the pilot to be prosecuted for manslaughter. "I had a lot of time for Matty," said Trooper Woodgate. "I respected him a lot and thought he was an awesome bloke. He was one of the nicest people I have ever met." So far five British servicemen have been killed by friendly fire and four in combat with Iraqi forces. On March 23 a Tornado aircraft was shot down by a US Patriot missile battery near the Kuwaiti border. Another two British soldiers were killed when their Challenger 2 Main Battle tank was engaged by another British tank west of Basra. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,926967,00.html * CREW DROWN AS US TANK TOPPLES INTO EUPHRATES by Sean Maguire in Shatra The Guardian, 1st April An American tank plunged from a bridge into the Euphrates river after the driver was killed in combat, apparently causing the other three crewmen to drown, US military officials said yesterday. The incident occurred last Thursday near Nassiriya, but the tank and the crew were not pulled from the river until Sunday, US central command said in a statement from its headquarters in Qatar. Central command said the tank driver was shot and killed while crossing a bridge and the M1A1 tank toppled into the river, landing upside down. The names of the four dead marines were being withheld until families were notified. US marines who entered the town of Shatra on Monday after storming it with planes, tanks and helicopter gunships were greeted with cries of "Welcome to Iraq". The welcome was a tonic for soldiers who have not always received the warm reception they expected, after US and British leaders told them the Iraqi people were waiting to be freed from repression under Saddam Hussein. "It's not every day you get to liberate people," said one delighted marine. As they searched the town, the marines pushed back the excited crowd. An interpreter urged local people through a loudspeaker on a Humvee not to hinder their movements. But as night approached with the town not fully under their control, the marines pulled back. It had been a day of mixed fortunes. It began with a pre-dawn raid to try to kill senior Iraqi officials believed to be directing guerrilla attacks. The ambushes have slowed the advance on Baghdad. This marine unit retraced its steps back south down Highway 7 to Shatra after bypassing the Iraqi forces there in their rapid advance last week. Planes dropped precision-guided bombs on four targets during the morning raid. Tanks and armoured personnel carriers then moved to the edge of the town and helicopter gunships raked the rubble-strewn target sites with heavy machine-gun fire. The targets were the local Ba'ath party headquarters and "associated planning sites", marine officers said. Having entered the town, the marines searched without success for the body of a colleague who was killed last week and whose corpse was believed to be in a hospital. Intelligence reports had suggested that General Ali Hassan al-Majid, or "Chemical Ali", the cousin whom President Saddam has put in charge of the southern front, was in the town. But Gen Majid, who earned his nickname for overseeing the use of poison gas against Kurdish villagers in 1988, was nowhere to be seen. The marines had also received intelligence reports that an Iraqi general was holed up inside the town but arrived just too late to capture him, military officials said. "He got away just before we got here," said company commander, Captain Mike Martin. "We believe there are about 200 to 300 Ba'ath party loyalists and Saddam Fedayeen irregulars in the town," he added. But the Fedayeen paramilitary forces had fled. Marines found a light still on and the telephone ringing when they entered what was thought to be their headquarters. Pooled dispatch from Sean Maguire of Reuters _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk