Ambulance driver Abdelmoneim Mohammed said he had not ferried any combattants wounded or killed and wearing the black Fedayeen outfit which US soldiers said their assailants wore.
Ooops! Looks like 4th Infantry shot up a BATF SWAT team!
Posted on 12/01/2003 4:02:05 PM PST by TexKat
SAMARRA, Iraq (AFP) - The US military said it believed 54 insurgents were killed in intense exchanges in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra the previous day but commanders admitted they had no bodies.
The only corpses at the city's hospital were those of ordinary civilians, including two elderly Iranian pilgrims and a child.
US Brigadier General Mark Kimmit told a Baghdad press conference that 54 militants had been gunned down, 22 wounded and one arrested.
But challenged about what had happened to the bodies, Kimmit said: "I would suspect that the enemy would have carried them away and brought them back to where their initial base was."
Asked about reports from senior police and hospital officials in the town of eight civilians killed and dozens more wounded, the US general insisted: "We have no such reports whether from medical authorities or police.
A few hours earlier, Colonel Fredrick Rudesheim, who heads the 3rd Combat Brigades that was involved in Sunday's bloody clashes, told reporters that his troops had killed 46 and captured another 11.
"Are you asking me to produce (them)?" he asked, when questioned by reporters about the absence of any militants' bodies at Samarra's single hospital or on the city's streets.
"This is a good question and I think perhaps if you can interview the Fedayeen (a disbanded militia of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime) or whoever attacked us, you might get a better answer."
Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Gonsalves, who commands the 166th Armored Battalion in Samarra, also said his troops were not in possession of the bodies.
The death toll, he said, "is based on the reports we got from the ground."
Lieutenant Joseph Marcee, who took part in Sunday's combat, said he saw several of the attackers lying dead on the ground.
"There was no time to pick up the bodies. We were receiving fire from other locations," he said.
Sergeant Nicholas Mullen, who fired rounds from an Abrams tank Sunday, offered yet another explanation for the army's inability to locate the corpses. "We don't stick around," he said.
The mystery, which borders on solving a mathematics equation, further deepened with Gonsalves' report.
According to him, a total of 60 militants, divided into two groups, attacked two convoys escorting new Iraqi currency to banks in the city.
Another four assailants in a BMW attacked a separate engineering convoy.
If the US troops killed 46 and captured 11 of them, only three of the survivors would have been left to pick up the corpses.
On Kimmit's figures the calculus becomes even hazier -- with 54 killed, 22 wounded and one captured, 13 militants remain unaccounted for, although both commanders did say the cash convoys also came under attack on their way in and out of the city.
As to how the troops came up with their casualty figures, Rudesheim said it was by counting their weapons.
"We don't indiscriminately engage people, only those who engage us with AK 47s and RPGs. That's how we determine the number of people we are engaging and, after talking with each soldier, we can tell just how many people are returning fire at us."
Residents in Samarra said they had not seen any of the militants' bodies, 46 or 54.
The head of the local hospital, Abed Tawfiq, reported eight dead civilians but no insurgents.
Ambulance driver Abdelmoneim Mohammed said he had not ferried any combattants wounded or killed and wearing the black Fedayeen outfit which US soldiers said their assailants wore.
"If I had seen bodies, I would have picked them up. It's not like the Americans would have done it.
"If the death toll had reached that announced by the Americans, the atmosphere in Samarra would be quite different."
Salaheddin Mawlud, a colonel in the former Iraqi army, who now heads Samarra city council's complaints office, said the American toll does not work.
"If there had been so many dead, we would have seen people rushing to the hospital, the police station or here, and it just didn't happen."
Abdelrizek Jadwa, who owns a grocery 50 meters (yards) from the scene of one of the attacks, said he did not have the shadow of a doubt.
"After the firing, I went out of my shop. There were no wounded, no killed on the streets. Where could they have disappeared?"
Stay Safe .......
There used to be a fella whose idea of psychological war was to use an auger to dig a final resting place for VC runners and couriers caught operating on the trails in his TAOR. After they had a half-dozen or so collected, he'd have them buried standing up, with one arm sticking up out of the ground, and in the hand a written message: surrender or die.
It worked reasonably well, and his area remained one the bad guys prefered to avoid, until he and his team were rotated out and a regular army battallion moved in to take over for the dozen Americans and their 600 Montagnard pals. Then the new troops started taking casualties, often from mines, no big deal, usually just one or two a day. Every day, until they left that place for good on 30 April, 1975.
-archy-/-
NOW, you're talking about some REAL allies...
Getting us "involved" with the Montagnards was the best thing that the "Civilians In Area" did for us....
We trusted them more - than the ARVN.
They also knew quite well how to deal with their enemy...and to terrify them....and to leave them as signs to others that may follow..
An ally that gave their all, and we abandoned them to the gentle mercies of the communists.....
Semper Fi
If I was in your line of work, I'd want to be real good at running, too. But in quick-and-dirty blow-it-in-place demo work and mine destruction shots, we were taught to walk away from our timefuze shots, lest we stumble or fall to close to our work project. Of course, we had a pretty good idea of how fast our own fuzes burned, or could use a pretty long section of commowire to pull a pullring igniter well outside the likely damage radius of smaller mines or charges. Things would be real different if we were playing by the other peoples rules....
Ambulance driver Abdelmoneim Mohammed said he had not ferried any combattants wounded or killed and wearing the black Fedayeen outfit which US soldiers said their assailants wore.
Ooops! Looks like 4th Infantry shot up a BATF SWAT team!
I have no doubt that this action was followed up by the enemy to clear away the bodies, and then tell their buddies in the American Press to ask about it.
Like Dan Rather was in bed with the Communist Vietnamese in the 1960s, so are many of the liberal media elite in bed with the Arab Terrorists now.
"It's a Liberal Thing!"
If CENTCOM is smart, they will ignore the questions and let the whole "body count" issue be one-sided.
Like Dan Rather once asked my late Father in Nam when Dad tried to give him some civic action stories, "What's the body count today, Jack?"
Ditto on the walk away unless under fire of course. If it took 3 minutes to "casually walk" out of the frag/blast zone then time fuse was ...doubled ...for peacetime safety.
Stay Safe !
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran has complained to the United States, through the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, that an Iranian civilian was killed in the firefight in Samarra, Iraq, and asked for an investigation, Iran's official news agency said Tuesday.
The U.S. military has not reported any Iranian casualties in Samarra. It says the U.S. forces killed 54 Iraqis in repelling ambushes in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad. Iraqi residents and hospital officials said the toll was much lower.
Because the United States has no relations with Iran, Iran's Foreign Ministry lodged its protest over the clash with the Swiss ambassador, who represents Washington in Iran.
The ministry's director-general for American affairs, Mehdi Mohtashami expressed Iran's strong disapproval over the killing of an Iranian citizen and called for an investigation, the Islamic Republic News Agency said.
Mohtashami accused U.S. forces of attacking what he called "holy sites" in Iraq, calling it "intolerable."
IRNA said the Swiss envoy said he would convey Iran's message to the United States quickly.
On Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi accused the United States of the "desecration" of Muslim sites in Samarra, IRNA reported.
Who is the AFP...AFP=Agence France Presse
One of the pro-Sadam, pro-Baathist propaganda agencies disguised as "free press".
Tehran, Dec 2, IRNA -- Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei on Tuesday expressed grief at desecration of holy shrines of Imam Hadi (AS) and Imam Hassan Asgari (AS) in Samarra, Iraq by the US troops.
Issuing a statement, the Supreme Leader expressed condolence to the Lord of the Time, Imam Mahdi (May God Hasten His Reappearance) and the entire Muslims on the savage attack of the US occupying forces against the shines of the 10th and 11th Imams of the Muslims, killing over 50 men, women and children and wounding a large number of civilians in Samarra.
"The brutal and arrogant occupiers showed once again that they respect none of the religious sanctities and embarked on a military show-down in dealing with the Iraqi people. The arrogant and ignorant officials of the United States think that they can force the Iraqi people with weapons and bullet to surrender. This wrong mentality will lead the occupying forces to despair and humiliation," the Supreme Leader said.
"I extend my condolence to Imam Mahdi (AS), the entire Muslims, especially the Iraqi people, and the theological centers and pray to Almighty God to bestow victory upon the Muslims to end occupation," The Supreme Leader said. 215/212 End
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