Posted on 03/28/2003 1:30:16 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Distraught Iraqis crowded into a hospital in a northern suburb of Baghdad on Friday, comforting or searching for scores of loved ones they say were killed or injured in an air raid on a busy market.
Dr Osama Sakhari, speaking at Baghdad's Al Noor Hospital after a day of heavy raids across the capital, said he had counted 55 people killed and more than 47 wounded from the market in the city's Shula neighborhood.
This Reuters correspondent personally counted five bodies in one of the hospital's morgue units, after an incident which could further undermine U.S. efforts to win Iraqi hearts and minds.
Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said at least 58 people had been killed.
"The number of the casualties...is 58 martyrs and I believe there will be more and the number of people injured is very big," he told the al-Hayat-LBC Arabic television channel, denouncing the U.S.-led invasion force.
"My explanation for their increasing crimes against civilians is that they are feeling the weight of the series of defeats which we inflicted on them on the outskirts of the cities and in the desert."
Arabic language television stations al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya said rescuers were looking for more victims, and showed pictures of people carrying coffins out of the hospital.
Al-Jazeera's correspondent said: "An Iraqi official told us that the search is still going on for those trapped under the rubble." The television showed pictures of bodies, including those of two children.
ARAB ANGER
Television pictures of bodies and damage in Iraq have fueled Arab anger against the U.S.-led invasion which Washington says is not aimed at ordinary Iraqis.
It says that the nine-day-old war is aimed at removing President Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership and ridding the country of weapons of mass destruction. Baghdad denies it has any such weapons.
Abu Dhabi television said U.S. cruise missiles may have hit the market and showed a gaping hole on one street and damaged cars.
The U.S. military blamed an earlier explosion in a Baghdad residential area on an errant Iraqi missile.
Jazeera showed pictures of bodies at the scene and in the hospital. It also showed an Iraqi woman hitting herself in the face repeatedly as she stared through a window at a wounded young man lying in a hospital bed. A group of men shouted "There is no God but God," as they stood beside an ambulance.
REPEATED AIR RAIDS
Explosions shook the outskirts of the city before midnight on Friday, in the latest of a series of air raids. U.S. and British bombs and missiles pounded the capital repeatedly on Friday in the heaviest day of raids since the war began.
Residents said eight people had died in a raid earlier on Friday on a Baath party office.
U.S. defense officials said a radar-avoiding B-2 stealth bomber had dropped two 4,600-pound bombs -- known as "bunker-busters" -- on a communications center in downtown Baghdad. Iraqi satellite television went off the air.
A large fire blazed on the west bank of the Tigris river and thick, billowing smoke rose on the horizon after dozens of blasts in the eastern and southern fringes of the capital.
Iraqi defense positions spat anti-aircraft fire above the rooftops as U.S. missiles hit government offices, including the ministries of information, planning and foreign affairs.
The raids knocked out many telephone lines -- some of the first bombing damage to civilian infrastructure.
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| Fri Mar 28, 4:20 PM ET |
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Iraqis look at the crater left by a bomb that landed in a busy market in the Al Shula'a district of West Baghdad Friday March 28, 2003, killing at least 50, according to local hospital sources. The U.S. Central Command in Qatar said it was looking into the matter. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay) |
Hint to Reuters -- This ain't no cruise missile crater...
I find it very odd that an errant cruise missle would just happen to find a large crowd of people in Baghdad at a time when such crowds are hard to come by.
This stinks to high heaven. Could it be a bomb was hidden in the marketplace and set off remotely to coincide with an aerial attack?
In Afghanistan war the Taliban showed the reporters a big crater supposedly caused by US bombing the night before. The crate was big, but it had stagnant water in the bottom and weeds growing along the sides.
Amazing that people buy this. Does the entire Middle East think that pro wrestling is real?
Saddam's minions may have noticed how much press their falling SA-2 got, and decided to try another PR blast.
The media around the world should be ashamed of themselves for their blinded stupidity.
*Iraqi Man takes on War Protester will brilliant logic.*
* Iraqi woman tells how Saddam operates *
Thank you for the post.
We only use cluster bombs on soft targets.
When mortars hit, the results are eerie, to say the least. Within only a few feet, a person laying on the ground may not be hit, but a person 20 meters away may feel the whole effect.
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The strike from over a day ago:
This is an anti-aircraft missile (surface or air launched) strike; the hole is very small, not even in the category of cruise missile warhead (live or dud) capability.
The near vertical nose down "result" in the earth, is not a flight termination profile for cruise missiles unless one fails an engine start or runs out of fuel prior to target, in which case the firing system cannot function.
The reason that the neighborhood took that hit so bad, is because a fuel tanker truck was nearby, and it did a slow-rate air-fuel explosion. That's why the neighbor hood looks whoomp'd but not dented severely.
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