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Burning Victims to Death: Still a Common Practice
Burning Victims to Death: Still a Common Practice
By Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
The latest ISIS atrocity releasing a video of a captured Jordanian fighter pilot being burned alive prompted substantial discussion yesterday about this particular form of savagery. It is thus worth noting that deliberately burning people to death is achievable and deliberately achieved in all sorts of other ways:
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Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan, NYU School of Law and Stanford University Law School, 2012:
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The most immediate consequence of drone strikes is, of course, death and injury to those targeted or near a strike. The missiles fired from drones kill or injure in several ways, including through incineration[3], shrapnel, and the release of powerful blast waves capable of crushing internal organs. Those who do survive drone strikes often suffer disfiguring burns and shrapnel wounds, limb amputations, as well as vision and hearing loss. . . .
In addition, because the Hellfire missiles fired from drones often incinerate the victims bodies, and leave them in pieces and unidentifiable, traditional burial processes are rendered impossible. As Firoz Ali Khan, a shopkeeper whose father-in-laws home was struck, graphically described, These missiles are very powerful. They destroy human beings . . .There is nobody left and small pieces left behind. Pieces. Whatever is left is just little pieces of bodies and cloth. A doctor who has treated drone victims described how skin is burned so that you cant tell cattle from human. When another interviewee came upon the site of the strike that killed his father, the entire place looked as if it was burned completely, so much so that even [the victims] own clothes had burnt. All the stones in the vicinity had become black. Ahmed Jan, who lost his foot in the March 17 jirga strike, discussed the challenges rescuers face in identifying bodies: People were trying to find the body parts. We find the body parts of some people, but sometimes we do not find anything.
One father explained that key parts of his sons burial process had to be skipped over as a result of the severe damage to his body. After that attack, the villagers came and took the bodies to the hospital. We didnt see the bodies. They were in coffins, boxes. The bodies were in pieces and burnt. Idris Farid, who was injured and lost several of his relatives in the March 17 jirga strike, described how, after that strike, relatives had to collect their body pieces and bones and then bury them like that. The difficulty of identifying individual corpses also makes it difficult to separate individuals into different graves. Masood Afwan, who lost several relatives in the March 17 jirga strike, described how the dead from that strike were buried: They held a funeral for everybody, in the same location, one by one. Their bodies were scattered into tiny pieces. They couldnt be identified . . . .
More:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/04/burning-victims-death-still-common-practice/
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Burning Victims to Death: Still a Common Practice (Original Post)
Judi Lynn
Feb 2015
OP
Not to mention the white phosphorus unleashed on Fallujah peeps by US military ~nt~
99th_Monkey
Feb 2015
#2
Burns straight down to the bone. Absolutely hellish. The photos are a nightmare. n/t
Judi Lynn
Feb 2015
#3
msongs
(67,420 posts)1. it's not an atrocity when the US military does it nt
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)2. Not to mention the white phosphorus unleashed on Fallujah peeps by US military ~nt~
Judi Lynn
(160,545 posts)3. Burns straight down to the bone. Absolutely hellish. The photos are a nightmare. n/t
marble falls
(57,106 posts)4. Thankyou for finding this and posting it.
appalachiablue
(41,146 posts)5. Thanks for this, what horrors.
polly7
(20,582 posts)6. Unimaginable pain and loss. nt.
niyad
(113,344 posts)7. "burning times", anyone? the catholic church certainly had a long history of doing this.
JustAnotherGen
(31,828 posts)8. +100000
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)9. redirect:
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)10. Glenn Greenwald discovers that people die in combat.
Next episode: Glenn discovers that killing prisoners is worse than killing enemies in battle