Posted on 05/21/2004 2:07:06 PM PDT by Gippers Brigade
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Fragments of musical instruments, tufts of women's hair, and a large blood stain are among the scenes in Associated Press Television News film of a destroyed house that survivors say U.S. planes bombed during a wedding party.
It is the first known footage of the aftermath of Wednesday's attack, which killed up to 45 people, mostly women and children from the Bou Fahad tribe in Mogr el-Deeb, a desert village on the Syrian border.
The U.S. military has said the target was a suspected safehouse for foreign fighters from Syria and denied Friday that children were killed in the airstrikes.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters in Baghdad that U.S. troops who reported back from the operation "told us they did not shoot women and children."
"There were a number of woman, a handful of women, I think the number was four to six, caught up in the engagement. They may have died from some of the fire that came from the aircraft," Kimmitt said.
But an Associated Press reporter in the Ramadi area, at least 275 miles east of Mogr el-Deeb, was able to identify at least 10 of the bodies as those of children.
At the Bou Fahad cemetery outside Ramadi, where the tribe is based, each of the 28 fresh graves contain one to three corpses, mostly of mothers and their young children.
Relatives said they include those of 2-year-old Kholood and 1-year-old Anoud, daughters of Amal Rikad, who was killed; of 2-year-old Raad and 1-year-old Ra'ed — whose headless body was found near his house — sons of Fatima Madhi, who was killed; of Saad, 10, Faisal, 7, Anoud, 6, Fasila, 5, Kholood, 4, and Inad, 3 — children of Mohammed and Morifa Rikad, who were killed.
There also are photo images of dead children, but it was not possible to determine if those victims were already accounted for by relatives.
Bou Fahad tribesmen denied there were foreign fighters among their community. They consider the desolate border area part of their territory and follow their goats, sheep and cattle there to graze. In the springtime they leave spacious homes in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, and roam the desert.
Smuggling livestock into Syria is also part of a herdsman's life, although no one in the tribe acknowledged that.
Weddings are often marked in Iraq (news - web sites) with celebratory gunfire, but survivors insisted no weapons were fired Wednesday — despite speculation by Iraqi officials that this drew a mistaken American attack.
The first bomb hit the huge goat-hair tent — where male guests were said to be sleeping — at about 2:45 a.m. Wednesday. The barrage didn't stop until sunrise, witnesses said. Women and children were in an adjacent one-story house and the men went to their nearby homes, they said.
After the first missile, Hamdan Khalaf ran in panic and hid in a grassy area.
"In the morning, we went back to the hill and saw people torn apart, attacked by the plane," Khalaf, who was not wounded, told APTN Thursday.
"We pulled them out of here," another man told APTN, standing on a pile of stones as he picked up a stained green cloth that looked like part of a young man's shirt. A severed arm lay in the rubble. "We took them to hospital — straight to the fridge," the unidentified man said.
An angry voice in the background of the tape denounced President Bush (news - web sites). "This is his terrorism," the voice said.
The body of what survivors said was the wedding's cameraman was pulled out of the debris Thursday.
The footage also showed women in colorful clothes sifting through the wreckage and carrying away blankets and other goods. Pieces of rockets and bullet casings were strewn across the sandy plain, as were pots and pans and a satellite dish. Partly charred pickup trucks and a water tanker stood in the desert.
The attack left few survivors. About a dozen wounded were taken to the town of Qaem, about 140 miles northwest of Ramadi and 130 miles north of Mogr el-Deeb.
Witnesses, interviewed Thursday by AP in Ramadi, said revelers at the wedding party began worrying when they heard aircraft overhead at about 9 p.m. Tuesday. Then came military vehicles, which stopped about two miles away from the village and switched off their headlights. The planes were still overhead at 11 p.m, so the hosts told the band to stop playing and everyone went to bed.
About four hours later, airstrikes began and continued until dawn when two helicopters landed and about 40 soldiers searched the house where the women had stayed and a second, vacant house. Soon after, the two houses were blown up. Some witnesses said the houses were attacked by helicopters; others said Americans detonated them with explosives.
Kimmitt confirmed that the operation was an air and ground assault. "Those people on the ground identified no children as part of that location that were killed," he said, adding that they reported only adult deaths.
He also referred to the APTN video and separate APTN footage from Wednesday in Ramadi that showed a headless body of a child and other bodies of children.
"What we saw in those APTN videos were substantially inconsistent with the reports we received from the unit that conducted the operation," Kimmit said. "We're now trying to figure out why there's an inconsistency.
"We're keeping an open mind as to exactly what happened on the ground. That's why we're continuing to try to gather all the facts; that's why we're not ruling out anything based on information coming forward," he added.
"Reported" by "Scheherezade Faramarzi" of the "Associated Press". Enough said.
"What we saw in those APTN videos were substantially inconsistent with the reports we received from the unit that conducted the operation,"
Wasn't Richard Pryor's line, though in a different context:
"Who you going to believe?
Me or your lying eyes"?
What a mess!
So they know for a fact the hair is from a woman? And musical instruments are evidence of a wedding party?
I think maybe its high time when we pull raids we supply some sort of tactical camera that records the raid.
They do have that
Im not sure, but I think we already do that.
These guys may be cowards who hide among women and children while they "fight," but they're not stupid. They've figured out how to play the Western press like a drum.
Yes but they do not have very many of them in use. If they did we could better combat the media interpertations of events.
True. And right now, their PR is more effective than GWB's PR is.
go check out this 'reporter's' previous crap. My hunch is that it's yet another Jenin Massacre story. I'll eat my shoe if I'm wrong.
I wonder how long it would take for Michael Moore to stage footage like this? Hmmm...
Hi troll!
Wars are not only fought on the ground, they are also fought in the press. Any general or any other commander who does not understand that point is capable of losing in the press every battle that is first won on the ground.
Are the US military brass as dumb as a bag of hair, that they do not realize this obvious point?
Congressman Billybob
Latest column, "Congressmen, Humorists, Burglars -- All of Us in the Trade."
what about if it was John Perry from NewsMax?
gohd
Since May 20, 2004 -- enough said.
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