Posted on 05/22/2004 8:50:33 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -
The U.S. military said Saturday it has found "no evidence of a wedding" at the site of an airstrike last week near the Syrian border, and said evidence so far suggested the target was a desert base for foreign terrorists sneaking into Iraq.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, coalition deputy chief of staff for operations, showed slides of military binoculars, guns and battery packs that could be used to trigger roadside bombs found by U.S. troops at the site.
He said "terrorist manuals," telephone numbers for Afghanistan and foreign passports, including one Sudanese, were also recovered there.
Survivors of the attack in Mogr el-Deeb, a desert village inhabited by members of the Bou Fahad clan, said they had just finished a wedding celebration when bombs fell before dawn Wednesday. More than 40 people were killed, including women and children.
Associated Press Television News footage taken at the site Thursday showed broken musical instruments, pieces of bloodied women's hair and the bodies of children. Kimmitt said no musical instruments were found, however.
Many of the bodies were taken about 250 miles to the east to Ramadi, the base of the clan and the capital of Anbar province which includes Mogr el-Deeb. According to Lt. Col. Ziyad al-Jbouri, the deputy police chief there, between 42 and 45 people died, including 15 children and 10 women. A local hospital doctor put the death toll at 45.
During a briefing for reporters, Kimmitt said the military was investigating the raid and had reached no final conclusions. However, he displayed pictures of some of the items found at the site.
He said suspicious materials included about 300 sets of bedding, 100 sets of prepackaged clothing as well as a "medical treatment room." He said the clothing could have been for infiltrators seeking to disguise themselves as Iraqis.
He said white powder also was found that could have been cocaine. The border area is a popular route for smugglers.
"None of the bodies had identification of any kind on them, no ID cards, no wallets, no pictures," Kimmitt said. "They had watches, and that was about the only way you could identify one person from another."
He said the absence of identification, as well as the remoteness of the area, suggested "that this was a high-risk meeting of high-level, anti-coalition forces."
The military's finding contrasts sharply with statements by survivors as well as local officials in Ramadi. On Thursday, a well-known wedding singer, Hussein al-Ali, was buried in Baghdad, and his family said he was killed in the airstrike.
Bou Fahad clansmen, who raise livestock, denied the presence of foreign fighters in their group. Members of the clan said the attack began a few hours after the wedding festivities had broken up for the night.
Kimmitt said farm vehicles were found, but that they showed no signs of being used for ranching. Nor, he added, was there evidence of any wedding celebration.
"There was no evidence of a wedding: no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration," he said. "No gifts. The men were almost all of military age."
"There may have been some kind of celebration," Kimmitt said. "Bad people have celebrations, too. Bad people have parties, too, and it may have been what was seen as some kind of celebration ... may have been just a meeting in the middle of the desert by some people conducting criminal or terrorist activities."
Members of the clan said, however, that the Americans did not question them after the attack and that when some of the survivors tried to approach U.S. ground troops, they were fired on.
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My first clue was that it was at 3:00 AM. I didn't need a second clue.
Must have been one of those middle of the night shotgun weddings.
ROFL!!
Our military must be mistaken on this one. The front page headline on the Cincinnati Enquirer was Iraqi's: Wedding party massacred by US troops, or some such.
Sounds sensible to me.
No bias in Cincinnatti... eh......
I've got it!I'm going to tell my dear beloved to meet me in the desert(8o-miles from the nearest town).We're going to get married in"the wee small hours"and party all night!!If we see any airplanes(or choppers),we're going to open up on them!!!Doesn't EVERYONE get MARRIED like this???
Somehow, I just can't see Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, attempting to "approach" SS troops (at least not with peaceful intentions), which convinces me that the "wedding party" explanation is likely pure BS.
Makes me a bit uneasy.
This is one of the great unreported stories ! CNN did publish a report-buried in the middle of 2 reports from Iraq.
You can read my report at:
http://www.biohazardnews.net/news.shtml
At this point,nobody knows where the bodies of the children came from.My GUESS is there was an actual wedding party that came to disaster in the al-Ramadi area.
Since the topic is after all a Muslim wedding party, Let me relate the experience of my wife at the Adams Mark hotel in Memphis last year. Several hundred Arabic looking ,sounding guests filled the ballroom for what the hotel staff told my wife was an "Indian wedding". Later in the evening she and a dozen other non wedding guests were trapped in a glass enclosed sitting area of the lobby when the wedding turned into a melee, near riot. The hotel security hid behind the bar with the servers until the local police finally arrived. My wife says the wedding guests put infants and small children on their shoulders as they shouted encouragements in Arabic at the brawing thugs. Some wedding I must say.
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