U.S. Soldiers Accused of Shooting Civilians in
Sadr City
By KIRK SEMPLE
03/10/07 - "New
York Times" - BAGHDAD, March 9 — American soldiers were accused
Friday of opening fire on a car carrying a family in the Baghdad
district of Sadr City, killing a man and his two young daughters
and wounding his son.
The allegations were made by the man’s wife, who was in the car,
and members of the Iraqi police, who were at the scene. The
American military command said in a statement on Friday that it
was investigating an episode in Sadr City involving “an
escalation of force,” but it could not confirm any details of
the account given by the man’s wife.
The woman, Ikhlas Thulsiqar, said her family had turned from an
alleyway onto a main street guarded by American soldiers.
Seconds later, she said, a fusillade of bullets ripped into the
car.
“They killed the father of my children! The Americans killed my
daughters!” she sobbed, sitting crumpled on the floor of Imam
Ali Hospital in Sadr City where rescuers had taken the victims,
including her daughters, 9 and 11, and her son, 7.
“That is a serious allegation, and we’ll take a look and figure
out what happened,” Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military
spokesman in Baghdad, said late Friday.
The deadly shooting appeared to be the first in the
working-class district involving either the Iraqi or American
military since a joint force of more than 1,100 American and
Iraqi troops began a house-to-house search for weapons and
militants there last Sunday.
The episode had the potential to inflame anti-American sentiment
in the neighborhood and reawaken the Mahdi Army, the Shiite
militia that has largely controlled the district but has agreed
to stand down to allow the sweep to take place.
The military operation in Sadr City, part of an effort to pacify
the capital by flooding the streets with security forces, has
served as a test of a new, fragile relationship between the
authorities and Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who controls
the Mahdi Army and commands a vast following among poor Shiites.
The military incursion followed protracted negotiations between
representatives of Mr. Sadr, neighborhood leaders and government
officials. Mr. Sadr vowed not to impede the crackdown in Sadr
City or elsewhere, and privately ordered his fighters not to
resist the military sweeps regardless of the level of
provocation.
But Mr. Sadr, a fierce nationalist who has long demanded a rapid
American withdrawal from Iraq, has also complained publicly
about the American involvement in the Sadr City operation.
Local leaders, in turn, have also warned that a heavy-handed or
prolonged American engagement in Sadr City might incite the
residents and their militia to retaliate. But in the past few
days, residents say, American forces have moved with great care
through the neighborhood and have mostly remained on the street
while their Iraqi counterparts have conducted the house-to-house
searches.
Also Friday, the purported leader of an insurgent umbrella
group, the Islamic State of Iraq, was captured in a raid on the
western outskirts of Baghdad, according to Iraqi state
television and The Associated Press, which quoted a top Iraqi
military spokesman.
The spokesman, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, told The A.P. that
the man, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, was caught in a raid in the Abu
Ghraib district and was identified by another detainee. American
officials had no confirmation of the capture.
Last Sunday, Iraqi officials announced that they may have
captured Mr. Baghdadi in Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, but
the suspect turned out to be someone else. The Islamic State of
Iraq has claimed responsibility for numerous major attacks in
Iraq, including the kidnapping last week of 18 people, most of
them police officers, who were subsequently killed.
In Diyala, American forces on Friday shot and killed three Iraqi
Army soldiers in a military pickup truck after they failed to
obey an American order to stop, Iraqi military officials said.
The spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Muhammad al-Askary, said
the military was investigating the episode, which took place
north of Baquba, though it appeared to be “a mistake.” He said
the soldiers were wearing uniforms and were in a vehicle with
military markings.
According to Colonel Garver, the American military was also
investigating the matter. “We understand there were three Iraqi
Army soldiers killed in this engagement, and it is too early to
tell the details surrounding the event,” he said.
American and Iraqi forces are fighting a growing Sunni insurgent
threat in Diyala, which has become one of the bloodiest
sectarian battlegrounds in Iraq. On Friday, the American
commander for northern Iraq, Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon, said
he had asked for more troops in the province.
General Mixon told reporters at the Pentagon in a videolink from
Iraq that he had already shifted troops to Diyala from elsewhere
in northern Iraq and requested reinforcements from the central
command in Baghdad.
He did not reveal how many additional troops he had requested,
but he told reporters to “keep an eye on what goes on in Diyala
over the next couple of weeks.” On Thursday, Gen. David H.
Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, said Diyala would
“very likely” get more troops.
In Hibhib, a town in Diyala with an entrenched insurgency,
gunmen from the Islamic State of Iraq laid siege to a police
station on Friday, killing one policeman and forcing others to
flee. They then looted it of weapons and equipment, burned
several police cars and blew up the building before escaping,
police officials said.
Four people in Baghdad, each in a different neighborhood, were
killed by sniper fire on Friday, according to an official at the
Interior Ministry. The official also said at least 10 bodies
were found dumped around the capital.
The American military reported that a marine was killed Friday
during a combat operation in Anbar Province.
On Friday, the satellite channel Al Jazeera reported that Raouf
Abdel-Rahman, the Iraqi judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to
death, had asked for asylum in Britain. The British Home Office
would not confirm the report, saying it does not discuss
individual cases.
Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi
employees of The New York Times from Baghdad and Baquba.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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