Your Hired
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?"
I'm about there with you.
Your Hired
It appears that if they can't say that the wounded and/or dead were at the hands of the American infidels then they just don't say who.
A Iraqi boy, who hospital officials said was wounded in a firefight, lies in a hospital in Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, December 1, 2003. U.S. troops said on Monday they had killed 54 guerrillas, some wearing the uniform of Saddam Hussein's feared Fedayeen militia, in a firefight to fend off attackers in the Iraqi town of Samarra. Attacks across Iraq at the weekend also killed seven Spanish intelligence agents, two South Korean contractors, two Japanese diplomats and their Iraqi driver, a Colombian contractor and two U.S. soldiers. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic
An Iraqi man receives medical help at a hospital in Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, December 1, 2003. U.S. troops said on Monday they had killed 54 guerrillas, some wearing the uniform of Saddam Hussein's feared Fedayeen militia, in a firefight to fend off attackers in the Iraqi town of Samarra. Attacks across Iraq at the weekend also killed seven Spanish intelligence agents, two South Korean contractors, two Japanese diplomats and their Iraqi driver, a Colombian contractor and two U.S. soldiers. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
An Iraqi boy watches as an Iraqi man display his wounds, after U.S. troops fought their way out of two simultaneous ambushes in Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, December 1, 2003. U.S. troops said on Monday they had killed 54 guerrillas, some wearing the uniform of Saddam Hussein's feared Fedayeen militia, in a firefight to fend off attackers in the Iraqi town of Samarra. Attacks across Iraq at the weekend also killed seven Spanish intelligence agents, two South Korean contractors, two Japanese diplomats and their Iraqi driver, a Colombian contractor and two U.S. soldiers. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
An Iraqi man holds up a Moslem flag beside two corpses in a morgue in Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, December 1, 2003, allegedly killed during shootouts a day earlier. A U.S. commander said Monday that said the testimony of those involved in gun battles suggested 46 attackers were killed in a fierce battle to fight off coordinated ambushes on convoys by guerillas, though the Army had earlier said the death toll was 54. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic
Coalition Forces Repel Ambushes in Samarra
By K.L. Vantran
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Dec. 1, 2003 – Several soldiers and one civilian were wounded as coalition forces successfully repelled ambush attacks in Samarra, Iraq, Nov. 30, a military spokesman said today from Baghdad.
Elements of the 4th Infantry Division – a tank company from 1st Battalion, 66th Armor reinforced with two squads of military police and four squads of infantry – were assigned to provide security to Iraqi Currency Exchange teams as they conducted dinar exchange at two banks in the Iraqi city, said Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations, Combined Joint Task Force 7.
Around 11 a.m. local time coalition forces reported contact with the enemy with simultaneous explosions of roadside bombs, said Kimmitt. The explosions wounded three coalition soldiers who were treated for shrapnel-related injuries and returned to duty.
When the Iraqi Currency Exchange teams arrived at the Samarra bank, the bank came under small-arms and rocket- propelled-grenade fire from multiple directions, said Kimmitt. The fire was "determined to be coming from windows and roofs of nearby buildings as well as from alleyways and nearby vehicles," he added. Coalition forces returned fire to defeat the enemy. Two coalition soldiers and one ICE team member were wounded, said the general. He estimated 24 of the enemy were killed.
As coalition forces moved north out of the city, they encountered a barricade and enemy fire, with five more enemy killed, Kimmitt said.
At the second bank, in the western part of the city, coalition forces were also attacked with small arms and rocket propelled grenades.
"Initial reports showed at least 12 attackers all armed with AK-47s and RPGs were seen running out and firing on coalition forces from a nearby mosque," said Kimmitt. After engaging this initial wave, the friendly forces also "came under fire from enemy forces who were using nearby roofs, gates and walls as cover," he added.
In a separate incident, in another section of Samarra, four men in a black BMW ambushed another coalition convoy. The coalition returned fire, wounding and capturing all four men, confiscating three AK-47s and two RPGs. Kimmitt said five coalition soldiers received non-life-threatening injuries, while an estimated 54 enemy personnel were killed and another 22 were wounded.
When asked if enemy forces were becoming more sophisticated, Kimmitt replied, "Any enemy looking at eight tanks, four Bradley fighting vehicles and 93 coalition soldiers and still decides to fight is making a dreadful mistake."
What is sophisticated, added Dan Senor, senior CPA spokesperson, is the successful implementation of currency exchange. The campaign was announced in July and implemented in October. Seventy-five percent of the currency is in circulation, he said. "This is an incredible success story – a logistical success story – that is only possible with the cooperation between the coalition and the Iraqi people."
Senor noted that Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, CPA head, continues to work with the Iraqi Governing Council on the implementation of the Nov. 15 political agreement that lays the foundation for a "free, democratic and sovereign Iraq."
"The governing council took two very important steps yesterday (Nov. 30)," he added. This included setting up committees to look at the process in the drafting of the transitional administrative law as well as at the preparations necessary for the process of direct elections for the constitutional convention.
You said it all. Good hit.
I think so. Toss the scraps (feet, hands, heads etc) on top of the Brads, and lay them out for the reporters back at base.
And then scream "WAR CRIME! WAR CRIME!"
Now THERE'S a question worth an answer!!!
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