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.
And think of the groom...He misses out on one virgin but now gets 72 of 'em...
And think of how many terrorists will not be born...
He got better.
It's definitly an ill wind that doesn't blow some good.
I've gotten bombed and several rehersal dinners...it's to be expected...
(rimshot)
if you've got one coming up, let me know, i'll buy the first round.
PS read your home page, always liked old TR
Slainte, CC
Has this story fallen off the face of the world, or what? Has anyone seen any newspaper articles on it?
TR sure had a way with words...
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