Death Toll 07/05 - 07/06/03

Seven Iraqi policemen killed in bomb blast as resistance to coalition grows


06 July 2003

A powerful bomb killed seven Iraqi police recruits and injured 54 others yesterday just after they had finished a five-day training course with US instructors in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad.

The explosion happened as the newly trained police were marching from a local boys' school to a nearby government building. Eight US police instructors, who had been in charge of the training programme, were not present when the bomb exploded.

Fifteen victims were receiving emergency surgery at Ramadi General Hospital.

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The devastating explosion in Ramadi is a major blow because reviving the Iraqi police force to establish security is a central aim of the occupation authorities. Looting has never stopped, thou



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British journalist killed in Baghdad



06 July 2003

A British journalist was shot dead in Baghdad outside the Iraqi National Museum last night. The man, described as a freelance television picture researcher, is the 16th journalist to be killed in Iraq since the start of the war on 20 March.

His death comes less than two weeks after six British military police were killed during a demonstration in the south of the country. Ambushes, shootings and other attacks, blamed on forces loyal to Saddam Hussein, have plagued coalition soldiers in Iraq in recent weeks. An American soldier guarding the museum was killed by a sniper on Thursday.

The Foreign Office confirmed that a man had been shot but refused to disclose further details. "We are urgently investigating reports of a British freelance journalist being shot today in Baghdad," a spokesman said. The body of the man, who appeared to be in his mid-twenties, was being held by US forces.



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Suicide bombers kill 16 at Moscow rock festival


06 July 2003

Terror returned to Moscow yesterday as two women suicide bombers blew themselves up near the entrance to a packed open-air rock concert, killing at least 16 people and wounding more than 20.

At least one child was among the victims at the Krylya festival at the Tushino airfield north of Moscow, attended by 40,000 teenagers and young adults. Although no claim of responsibility was made last night, the attack was immediately blamed on Chechen separatist rebels, who have conducted a sustained campaign against Russian authorities. Last October, Chechen gunmen and women seized 800 hostages inside a Moscow theatre, leading to the deaths of more than 100.

Yesterday's attack occurred shortly after Russian band Crematorium took to the stage at around 2.30pm. A massive explosion went off at one of the entrances, and, as panic spread, the crowd stampeded towards the other exits. Ten minutes later a second bomb went off near another exit by an outdoor market. A third blast shook the field around 15 minutes after that.



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Iraq: the human toll


Sunday July 6, 2003

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The 'daisy-cutter' bounced and exploded a few feet above ground, blasting red-hot shrapnel into the walls not of a tank but of houses. Rahad Septi and 10 other children lost their lives; another 12 were injured. Three adults were also killed.

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The total figure of civilian deaths in the Iraqi conflict may never be known, but an investigation of random incidents reveals that whatever the total, the proportion of civilian to military deaths among Iraqis is overwhelming. A graphic illustration of this can be found in the corner of the Abu Graib cemetery on the edge of Baghdad. Here, during the days after the fall of Saddam's regime, families came to disinter the grievous legacy of that tyranny, in the form of their relatives' skeletons. But other huddles of people came, too - to bury, not recover, their dead. Most did so in family plots, but some were too poor to own such patches of land and instead placed their cadavers beneath mounds of earth in a paupers' plot outside the cemetery. The grave digger, Akef Aziz, explains that those from the military, or Fedayeen Saddam units, were also covered with an Iraqi flag. Out of a total of 916 graves in this plot, 17 are those of fighters. 'They were coming in at least 30 or 40 a day,' recalls Aziz. 'They were good times for us, because we are paid by the body.'

<snip>

Kassim's voice begins to crack. 'I saw my eldest daughter, Mawra, die. She was nine; I saw it with my eyes: she took the first shot, opened her eyes, and closed them again.' Gufran, his second daughter, was also killed immediately. 'But my son Mohammed, he was six and in the first year of primary school, he was still breathing. And my Zainab, she is five, was also still alive, although she had been shot in the head.'

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The missile which destroyed Hashem's family struck at 1.15 pm. 'I was outside and heard something like the wind, a plane, and then something thrown at the house. I went flat on the floor, and felt the heat on my body. When I looked up, the house was falling in, on fire. My eldest daughter Bashar was buried beneath it. My father and mother, Ali Kadem and Reni, died but I did manage to wrap my wife in a blanket and get her to the hospital, where she died that night.'




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Iraq: the human toll (part two)


Sunday July 6, 2003

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The Americans might have seen reason for dispatching the bomb that crashed through the ward ceiling, in breezy defiance of the Geneva Conventions. As part of the Baa'th party's tactic to use such places as hospitals for human shields, the governor of Nasiriyah, Adel Mehdi, and head of security Kamil Bahtat had arrived that afternoon, brandishing satellite phones which give out global positioning signals easily picked up by American radar. The doctors, no fools, 'were screaming at the Ba'athists to leave,' says Dr Azurgan. 'One of my colleagues even threatened to shoot them if they did not.'

They remained - and survived. But, whatever the temptation to the Americans, two red crescents, still visible, clearly marked the roof of the building, as did a flag bearing the same symbol. In theory protected by the laws of war, some 70 patients were wounded and four killed - before the scene of mayhem that followed. 'As the ambulances moved in to take the injured to the other hospital, they fired at them, too, from helicopters,' recalls Dr Azurgan. 'They were shooting at anyone who was driving or walking on the street.'

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It is hard to cite a figure for the civilian dead in Nasiriyah - 'about 800, maybe more', calculates the keeper of records at the main hospital, Abdel Karim, who logged 412 war-death certificates from his own wards alone, of which only 25 were military casualties - that is, those wearing a black or military uniform, or else a black ribbon somewhere on civilian clothes, as was the practice of the Fedayeen Saddam paramilitaries. The papers also show 3,013 war wounded, including Mr and Mrs Kassim, the deaths of whose children may or may not lie elsewhere, in some American record.

<snip>

It was after the medical teams began trying to load their vehicles with the injured that bombers returned for a second raid. 'By then, I'd say 35 or so people had been killed, and the military target destroyed,' says Ubayed.'It was during the second raid that they hit the ambulance. We saw it catch fire and five people were killed.' What remains of the vehicle is now parked at the local Red Crescent base - a gnarled frame of scorched metal without a trace of paint left, lacerated by shrapnel, and harboured next to another ambulance on which the torched medical emblem, the red crescent - a supposed protection - is still visible.

More?


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U.S. Soldier Shot and Killed in Baghdad


Monday July 7, 2003 12:19 AM

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - An assailant shot and killed a U.S. soldier waiting to buy a soft drink at Baghdad University, firing once from close range in the third such assault in nine days on Sunday. The style was coldly similar to the killing of the young British freelance cameraman, who was shot in the head outside a Baghdad museum on Saturday.

U.S. troops on patrol in Baghdad and other areas have been attacked several times a day, and Iraqi police and civilians perceived to be working with the occupying forces also have been targeted. In the most serious such attack, a bomb blast in the western town of Ramadi killed seven Iraqi police recruits as they graduated from a U.S.-taught training course on Saturday. Dozens more were injured.

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The U.S. soldier killed Sunday at Baghdad University also was shot at close range. The soldier from the Army's 1st Armored Division was evacuated to a combat support hospital after the midday shooting. He died later, the U.S. military said.



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Eight die in Afghan factional fighting

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, July 5: Eight people have been killed in the latest clashes between factions in northern Afghanistan where British forces are heading this month to help the government tackle lawlessness.

The violence came after the Afghan government said it had worked out a plan to ease tension in the volatile north and the two main factions had agreed to demilitarize its main city, Mazar-i-Sharif.

Fighters from the two main rival factions, both of whose leaders are members of the transitional government, have clashed repeatedly in Mazar-i-Sharif and surrounding areas since the Taliban's demise in 2001.

In the latest fighting, two people were killed and one wounded on Friday night in a battle between the forces of ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum and ethnic Tajik commander Ustad Atta Mohammad, a senior official in Atta's force said on Saturday. But an official in Dostum's faction said his men were not involved in the fighting. -Reuters






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Investigators examine the site of the blast near Tushino airfield. At least 16 people were killed and about 50 injured when two female suicide bombers blew themselves up at a Moscow rock concert.(AFP/Tatiana Makeeva)




Family members of slain Ramadi police cadet Wissam Abdullah Muhsin blame American forces in Ramadi, Iraq Sunday, June 6, 2003 while discussing Saturday's attack on graduating police cadets. Seven American-trained Iraqi cadets were killed in an explosion Saturday and one more died overnight. Family members, including Muhsin's uncle Abed Sager Mohammed, center, said the Americans had staged the attack and blamed insurgents in order to turn Iraqi's on each other.(AP Photo/John Moore)




Unidentified friends and family mourn during the funeral of Army Sgt. 1st Class Gladimir Philippe, in Woodbridge, N.J., Saturday, July 5, 2003. Philippe was killed in Iraq last month. (AP Photo/Tim Larsen)




The casket of Lance Cpl. Gregory MacDonald, of Burlington, Mass., is carried into St. Margaret's Church for a funeral service Saturday, July 5, 2003, in Burlington. MacDonald was killed in Iraq, on June 25 when his light-armored vehicle overturned as he was heading to assist another group of U.S. soldiers under attack. He was 29. MacDonald's brother, Mark MacDonald, follows in civilian clothes, upper right. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

Afraid to say it, but it's only going to get worse before it gets better. For the coward in chief who lives under the protection of the best security in the world, it's easy to be macho. In the meantime Bush Lies, People Die.

Thanks for making it human.

And thanks for the support.

Welcome to DU!! :toast: