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Iraqis Say Civilians Killed in U.S. Raids
Military Asserts Fatalities in West Were Insurgents
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
10/18/05 "Washington
Post" -- -- BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 -- A U.S.
fighter jet bombed a crowd gathered around a burned Humvee on
the edge of a provincial capital in western Iraq, killing 25
people, including 18 children, hospital officials and family
members said Monday. The military said the Sunday raid targeted
insurgents planting a bomb for new attacks.
In all, residents and hospital workers said, 39 civilians and at
least 13 armed insurgents were killed in a day of U.S.
airstrikes in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, a Sunni
Arab region with a heavy insurgent presence.
The U.S. military said it killed a total of 70 insurgents in
Sunday's airstrikes and, in a statement, said it knew of no
civilian deaths.
At Ramadi hospital, distraught and grieving families fought over
body parts severed by the airstrikes, staking rival claims to
what they believed to be pieces of their loved ones.
In Albu Fahad, a community on the east edge of Ramadi, family
members gathered Monday in a black funeral tent. A black banner
listed the names of the 18 children and seven adults allegedly
killed by the F-15 strike.
Residents and the U.S. military gave sharply different accounts
of the air raid.
Both agreed that the incident occurred near a crater left in a
road by a bomb that killed five U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi
soldiers on Saturday.
Residents said that a second Humvee was attacked at the site
Sunday and that its burned wreckage remained at the scene. U.S.
forces cordoned it off for one or two hours, then departed with
the wreckage still there, residents said.
Children and other local people gathered around the Humvee, said
Ahmed Fuad, a resident.
Some of the children were idly pelting the vehicle with rocks
when the bomb hit, Fuad said.
Fuad was one of the fathers and brothers gathered under the
funeral tent on Monday, as mothers and other female family
members mourned in the privacy of their homes, in accordance
with Islamic tradition. Fuad said the dead included his
4-year-old son, Saad Ahmed Fuad, and his 8-year-old daughter,
Haifa Ahmed Fuad.
Fuad said he was unable to find one of the 8-year-old's legs and
had to bury her without it.
Another boy, 6-year-old Muhammed Salih Ali, was buried in a
plastic bag after relatives collected what they believed to be
parts of his body, mourners said.
Fuad listed the names and ages of what he said were five of the
other children killed.
Residents said late Monday that 10 other children were killed in
the same strike. The names, ages and other details of the other
alleged child victims could not immediately be obtained Monday
night after the funeral.
The U.S. military's account of the airstrike said nothing about
a second attack Sunday on a Humvee.
According to the military statement, an F-15 crew on a combat
patrol saw four vehicles arrive at the scene of Saturday's
roadside bomb. About 20 men were inside, the military said.
The men were in the process of planting another bomb in the same
crater "when the F-15 engaged them with a precision-guided bomb,
resulting in the confirmed death of all the terrorists on the
ground," the military statement said.
Insurgents in Iraq frequently use bomb craters from old blasts
to hide explosives for more attacks.
The Associated Press also reported that 25 civilians were killed
in that airstrike, citing a tribal leader, Chiad Saad.
Officials at Ramadi hospital said at least 13 armed fighters of
Abu Musab Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq movement also were killed
in the day's bombings, along with the civilians they said were
killed.
At the hospital, the fly-covered bodies of three children and a
woman lay on the ground outside, with no room left in the
hospital's refrigeration units.
Residents said U.S. forces had bombed two houses in northern
Ramadi. The women and three children had been inside a home of a
wealthy local man, identified only as Haj Abdullah, who had
agreed to take in wounded insurgents to tend to them, some
residents said. Other residents denied that account.
The U.S. military statement described a string of air attacks
Sunday around Ramadi, including the crew of a Cobra helicopter
opening fire Sunday night on alleged insurgents seen running
from a suspected insurgent safe house. The insurgents had shot
at the Cobra as they ran away, the military said.
The Cobra crew killed roughly 10 men, the military said.
Twenty minutes later, an F/A-18 fighter-attack jet crew saw
another 35 to 40 men taking weapons from the same suspected safe
house and loading them into vehicles.
The pilots hit the house with a precision-guided bomb, killing
all the men, the statement said.
Ten minutes later, U.S.-led forces came under small-arms fire in
Ramadi, the military said. An F/A-18 hit the building where the
fire was coming from with a Maverick missile, and troops on the
ground hit the building with missiles from shoulder-mounted
launchers.
Up to three insurgents were killed there, the military said.
Ramadi serves as one of the bases and shelters for the
insurgency. Iraqi and foreign fighters operate in a string of
towns on both sides of the Euphrates River in Anbar province.
They ferry weapons, recruits and money from neighboring Syria
into Iraq in the province.
Since May, U.S. Marines have launched a series of largely
hit-and-run offensives on the Anbar province communities, hoping
at least to disrupt insurgent operations.
U.S. forces -- stretched thin in Anbar for most of the war but
now building in number -- have increasingly used airstrikes to
take out suspected insurgent caches and safe houses, bombing in
towns as well as rural areas. The airstrikes allow U.S. troops
to hit suspected insurgents without risking firefights or
planted bombs on the ground.
In other operations, Marines killed at least 18 suspected
insurgents in Anbar, the military said in a statement. The
Marine attacks included one against a cave complex where alleged
bombers were storing munitions, the military said.
In political violence, a drive-by shooting killed two police
officers in the northern city of Kirkuk, and a suicide bomber
attacked a funeral for a sheik in Samarra, about 65 miles north
of Baghdad, killing two civilians, news agencies said.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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