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News :: Peace |
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EMAIL ACTION! *Massive* Civilian Casualties Ignored By Media |
Current rating: 0 |
by richard
(No verified email address) |
02 Apr 2003
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Massive civilian casualties! Ignored again! Take action! |
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---------- URGENT ACTION NEEDED!! -----------------
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URGENT ACTION NEEDED!! (see below)
We now know that the missile that killed more than 60 in a Baghdad market was made in America and fired by a U.S. bomber, probably a B-52.
Links can be found here (but never mind that story for now)
http://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=MFR+96214+09
The latest story, one that we must act on, is here:
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030401/1/39o1f.html
Wednesday April 2, 12:56 AM
Bombings kill 48 more civilians south of Baghdad
Forty-eight more civilians, including women and children, have been killed and 310 wounded in US-British bombings around this town south of Baghdad in the last 24 hours, a hospital director revealed.
The deaths brought to 73 the number of Iraqi civilians who have died under allied bombings since Monday.
Thirty-three civilians, including women and children, were killed and 310 wounded in a coalition bombing on the southern province of Babylon on Tuesday morning, a hospital director said.
Murtada Abbas said the bombing targeted the Nader residential area at the southern outskirts of the farming town of Hilla, 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of the capital.
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.
At the scene of the bombing, dozens of what seemed to be parts of cluster bombs equipped with small parachutes were peppered over a large area, an AFP correspondent at the site said.
Iraqi soldiers were seen collecting the debris, which witnesses said coalition warplanes had dropped over the neighborhood. The soldiers poured fuel on the bombs before setting them on fire to explode the ordnance.
Dozens of homes were destroyed in the bombing that also killed donkeys and chickens, the correspondent said.
Fifteen members of a family were killed 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 told AFP on Tuesday.
Razek al-Kazem al-Khafaji said he lost his wife, six children, his father, his mother, his three brothers and their wives.
Khafaji, sitting among the 15 coffins at the local hospital, said the family was fleeing fierce fighting in Nasiriya, further south, when they were targetted by a US helicopter in Haidariya.
US troops admitted killing seven women and children when they opened fire Monday on a civilian vehicle at a military checkpoint manned by the US Army's Third Infantry Division at Najaf, 150 kilometers (95 miles) south of Baghdad.
On Monday, eighteen civilians were also killed in coalition bombings on Baghdad, according to Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf.
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And here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,927890,00.html
(excerpt)
Children killed in US assault
Ewen Mackaskill in Washington and Suzanne Goldenberg in Baghdad
Wednesday April 2, 2003
The Guardian
Dozens of Iraqi villagers were killed and injured in a ferocious American air and land assault near the Iraqi city of Babylon, hospital officials in the town said yesterday.
Reuters reporters on the scene confirmed the deaths of at least nine children, two other civilians and two Iraqi fighters at Hilla in a bombardment on Monday night and early yesterday morning.
An Iraqi hospital official said the death toll stood at 33 civilians, with more than 300 wounded.
Unedited TV footage from Babylon hospital, which was seen by the Guardian, showed the tiny corpse of a baby wrapped up like a doll in a funeral shroud and carried out of the morgue on a pink pallet.
It was laid face-to-face on the pavement against the body of a boy, who looked about 10.
Horrifically injured bodies were heaped into pick-up trucks, and were swarmed by relatives of the dead, who accompanied them for burial.
Bed after bed of injured women and children were pictured along with large pools of blood on the floor of the hospital.
"All of these are due to the American bombing to the civilian homes. Hundreds of civilians have been injured, and many have been killed," said Nazim al-Adali, an Edinburgh-trained doctor at the hospital, who appealed to his "colleagues" in England to protest against the bombings.
Among the injured in the women's ward was Aliya Mukhtaf, who said her husband and her six children were killed in the attack. The TV pictures also showed a teenage boy with bandages over the stump where his right hand was sheared off by shrapnel.
"There are not any army cars or tanks in the area," said Dr al-Adali, who claimed cluster bombs had been used.
Several of those interviewed on TV described large tank movements as the US tried to advance the final 50 miles to Baghdad.
"God take our revenge on America," a stunned man said repeatedly at the hospital. Hospital staff said the man's whole family was wiped out.
"What has he done wrong, what has he done wrong?" the driver of a pick-up truck ferrying the dead said as he held the body of an infant.
Residents said US forces had attacked the town on Monday but were pushed back by regular and irregular Iraqi forces. As the Americans retreated, they shelled the town, the residents said. One US soldier was reported killed in the action on Monday.
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------- PLEASE TAKE THE FOLLOWING ACTIONS!! ---------------
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(1) Send this message to all of your lists, friends, family, associates.
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(2) Contact the following, ask them to cover the story about massive civilian casualties at Hilla if they haven't, and tell them how you feel about this tragedy.
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CNN feedback:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/
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Fox News:
http://www.foxnews.com/
page to the bottom
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ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/service/help/abccontact.html
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CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/home/main100.shtml
page down, click on "Feedback"
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MSNBC News
http://www.msnbc.com/news/435157.asp?0bb=-m1
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(3) Now please contact your local news outlets.
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Comments
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Re: EMAIL ACTION! *Massive* Civilian Casualties Ignored By Media |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: -2
02 Apr 2003
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Richard,
The US Military has gone to incredible lengths to advoid civilian casualties and you know it. These deaths, while tragic, could all have been advoided, had Saddam disarmed in accord with the 1991 Cease Fire agreement.
We do not target cilivians, not only is it barbaric, it is not smart as we will shortly be an army of occupation.
Were we really the butchers that your article states, we would simply carpet bomb Bagdhad and let them fend for themselves. Blame the US if you wish, but open your eyes to the reality of war.
Jack |
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Collateral Or Not, We Need To Accept Responsiblity For Our Damage |
by Mink!
mink (nospam) tcp.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 5
02 Apr 2003
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Collateral damage or not, we have a responsibility to acknowledge the results of our bombing campaigns, particularly when said bombing campaigns are part of an entirely voluntary "pre-emptive" invasion of a foreign country. As you point out, war is not clean, and will never be clean, despite the efforts of our leaders here to portray it as such in their carefully orchestrated slide shows every morning.
Despite concrete evidence that the shrapnel in question belonged to a missile fired from the Kitty Hawk (I've been on the Kitty Hawk, it's a bit strange hearing this news!) the latest allegation by the US administration is that the shrapnel might have been planted on the site by the Iraqi regime. I suppose it may have, but the old adage about zebras comes to mind.
Smart bombs ain't always so smart.
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The Proof: Marketplace Deaths Were Caused By A US Missile |
by Cahal Milmo
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Apr 2003
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Saja Jaffar, 2, is treated by a hospital nurse after being wounded by a bomb that landed in West Baghdad Friday March 28, 2003. Iraq's information minister said at least 58 people were killed Friday in a crowded market in northwest Baghdad by what local officials called a US bombing. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
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 Raytheon, 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 defenses 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 Defense 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 skepticism."
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 (http://www.gidm.dlis.dla.mil/bincs/begin_search.asp) maintained by the Defense Logistics Information Service, part of the Department of Defense, 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 defense 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."
Defense 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 aluminum 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 Defense 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-defense 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.
© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
http://www.independent.co.uk/ |
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Red Cross Sees Dozens Of Civilian Bodies In Town |
by AP
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
02 Apr 2003
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Posted 4/2/2003 4:00 PM
GENEVA (AP) Red Cross workers saw the bodies of dozens of people including women and children at a town south of Baghdad where Iraqi officials claim U.S. helicopters attacked a residential neighborhood, the relief organization reported Wednesday.
At least 280 injured people are being treated at the Hillah Surgical Hospital, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, said Florian Westphal, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
"The dead bodies and the nature of the injuries would suggest that at least some of them are the result of bombing," Westphal said.
Iraqi officials said Tuesday that U.S. Apache helicopters attacked a neighborhood in Hillah, killing 33 people and injuring more than 300.
The U.S. Central Command said it was investigating the claim.
Westphal said many of the casualties came from fighting over the past 48 hours in the town of Hindiyah. U.S. Army troops fought their way into the town on Monday, capturing dozens of members of President Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard.
Westphal said the hospital was unable to handle the large number of injuries. The Red Cross team, which visited the area Tuesday before returning to Baghdad, was able to supply a limited number of dressings and intravenous fluids and hoped to return Wednesday with more supplies.
"We would once again urgently remind all the parties in this conflict of their absolute obligation to do everything to protect civilians in the way they are fighting and the way they choose their targets," Westphal said.
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. |
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Re: EMAIL ACTION! *Massive* Civilian Casualties Ignored By Media |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: -1
06 Apr 2003
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Mink,
Once again you miss my point entirely. If our target were indeed cilvilians, we could apply a Dresden to them or better still a Hiroshima. We have not. We are trying to free these people.
As for the missile in the market. It could have been ours. One question though, if it was, where are the missile fragments? If it was ours, why have'nt they shown them to the world. Is it possible that one of their air to air missiles fired at our brave pilots or an anti-aircraft shell simply landed in the wrong place? Are you so blind as to completely discard this possibility. I suspect that if we did it, we will admit it. It will have been an accident.
One way to prevent further loss of life is for the bastard to give himself up. I realize that you guys will have once again been proven wrong, but so what, we win.
Jack |
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