Posted on 05/19/2004 1:58:35 PM PDT by ambrose
U.S. Army Says Kills Around 40 in Iraq Attack
Wed May 19, 2004 04:45 PM ET
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. army said on Thursday it killed around 40 people in an attack on suspected foreign fighters in Iraq near the Syrian border, but disputed reports that the victims were members of a wedding party.
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the U.S. military in Iraq, told Reuters the attack early on Wednesday was within the military's rules of engagement.
"At 0300 (7 p.m. EDT Tuesday) we conducted an operation about 85 km southwest of al-Qaim...against suspected foreign fighters in a safe house," Kimmitt said. "We took ground fire and we returned fire."
Kimmitt said there were no indications that the victims of the attack were part of a wedding party. He said a large amount of money, Syrian passports and satellite communications equipment had been found at the site after the attack.
But Dubai-based Al Arabiya television, quoting eyewitnesses, said the raid on the village of Makr al-Deeb before dawn had targeted people celebrating a wedding and had killed at least 41 civilians.
"We received about 40 martyrs today, mainly women and children below the age of 12," Hamdy al-Lousy, the director of Qaim hospital, told Al Arabiya. "We also have 11 people wounded, most of them in critical condition."
Arabiya showed pictures of several shrouded bodies lined up on a dirt road. Men were shown digging graves and lowering bodies, one of a child, into the pits while relatives wept.
"The U.S. planes dropped more than 100 bombs on us," an unidentified man who said he was from the village said on Al Arabiya. "They hit two homes where the wedding was being held and then they leveled the whole village. No bullets were fired by us, nothing was happening," he added.
Guests and relatives at Arab weddings often fire guns in the air in jubilation.
The United States, which is facing a Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim insurgency in Iraq, says foreign fighters are entering Iraq from Syria.
In July 2002, a U.S. air strike on an Afghan wedding party killed 48 civilians. A report released by the U.S. Central Command said the strike was justified because American planes had come under fire.
Yeah, lots of weddings at 3 a.m. on a Wednesday morning.
All your stinking weddings are belong to us.
100 bombs?
I don't think there would be any injured, just a big hole.
Anyone else know about this?
oh, I believe it. I've seen dozens of Arab weddings that included firing mortar rounds and AK's. I've been to many that do this......well, maby not "many" but some. Or maybe none. Hell, I've never seen such a thing. Notice the satisfaction of reporting all the " women and children below the age of twelve" that got to be martyrs. And don't forget, these heroes are good at hiding behind these same "women and children below the age od twelve".Beside all that, they can be reported as "martyrs".
We say its Syrian fighters m they say its a wedding party , we say we killed 40 insurgents , they say we only killed women and kids. Somewhere in here somebody is lying. I believe our version.
"Yeah, lots of weddings at 3 a.m. on a Wednesday morning." (Where people are firing guns in the air . . . conveniently at U.S. helos!)
Just curious, but why do we get so much Reuters crap on FR? We all know it's not objective and serves out shovels full of hate America propaganda every day.
How about we take up collections and send a freeper to Iraq to give us news from Iraq. Somewhere away from the Bagdhad hotels where the drug-sopped so-called journalists scribble from.
Have a nice trip.
OMG, they blew up the rehearsal dinner! ; )
CC
Ah those silly Iraqi terr's, they were just wearing panties on their heads in sympathy to the prisoner abuse scandal.
Or, 41 virgin terr perps get 72 old whores posing as vestal virgins.
Ah, the pain & the shame. The MSM is right on time to denounce those bad Americans, again.
Yes!
As I've said before, if Reuters reported that I was a man, I'd feel constrained to double-check.
Dan
LOL.
Those ethnic weddings often feature large amounts of money. 
Remember last year when an American missle supposedly went astray and landed in a market in Baghdad. Film showed funeral procession of innocent civilian killed. Except when one of our helicopters came too close the "dead" person jumped off the stretcher and ran away.
What color was the ground at Little Big Horn?
Okay, so the jihadis were having a wedding in the safe house and got missiled. That'll learn 'em.
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