|
US blames Iraqi attack for blast
26/04/2003 18:33 - (SA)
Baghdad - At least six people, all from one family, were killed in Baghdad on Saturday when a stash of Iraqi weapons guarded by US troops exploded after what US commanders said was an Iraqi attack on its soldiers.
A series of explosions at the site sent rockets raining down on a nearby residential area, one of which flattened a house and buried the victims in the rubble. Three other people were missing and dozens left wounded.
Witnesses described a grisly scene of blood-spattered bodies being pulled from the wreckage as residents were starting what was supposed to be a week of hope amid efforts to rebuild the devastated Iraqi capital.
"I saw three dead women with my own eyes. One of my friends was killed. They pulled him out of the building covered with blood," said a distraught Ahmed Khilal, 18.
A US soldier was also lightly hurt in the incident, which US Central Command called a direct attack on the troops who were guarding the arms cache in the southern Baghdad neighbourhood of Zaafaraniya.
"An unknown number of individuals attacked US 3rd Infantry Division soldiers who were guarding a cache of captured Iraqi ammunition near Baghdad this morning," it said in a statement.
"During the attack, the assailant fired an unknown incendiary device into the cache, causing it to catch fire and explode. The explosion caused the destruction of the cache as well as a nearby building," it said.
Anger at US occupation
The incident underlined the chaos still gripping the Iraqi capital more than two weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein as well as the anger felt by many here at the US occupation of the country.
Furious residents pelted US troops with stones as they tried to take some of the wounded to a military hospital at Camp Rashid, an airbase in the city's southeast captured by US forces during the war to topple Saddam.
An AFP reporter saw six corpses and the hospital's surgeon, Shaker Mahmoud Nasser, said: "I have six bodies but I was told that there are between 11 and 14 dead." He said around 30 people were wounded.
Two of the family members missing and feared dead in the rubble were young children. Distraught survivors of the Samer al-Racabi family screamed and cried, and eldest son Thamer blamed the US troops.
"Does God accept this?" he wailed, his body trembling with fury.
"We kept telling the Americans not to store explosives so close by. What happened? Why didn't they listen to us?"
During the war to topple Saddam, the United States repeatedly accused his regime of hiding military targets in civilian areas and US Central Command again laid the blame on the former Baghdad leadership.
"The location of the ammunition cache near a civilian population is another example of the former regime's disregard for the safety of Iraqi citizens," it said.
Controlled explosions
Some residents complained that the troops had been conducting controlled explosions to destroy the weapons, but army officers on the scene said they were not carrying out any such operations.
Hours after the incident, smoke was still pouring into the sky from the site of the cache. Ammunition was still exploding but there was little else left except scorched earth.
Where the family's house once lay, bloodied clothes and torn schoolbooks bore witness to another round of civilian deaths, which have inflamed passions throughout the US-led war to bring down Saddam.
Hundreds of angry neighbourhood residents nearly trampled each other in the rush to get to the site of the house and begin a ritual of mourning. Relatives said the dead would be buried in the southern holy Shiite city of Najaf.
It was unclear exactly how many rockets had hit the area. Some neighbours said there had been at least two which exploded but did not cause any damage.
"I was making my breakfast and I got a terrible shock and then everything turned black," said Suad Saber, one of the wounded. "When I woke up I was in hospital."
The force of the explosion broke windows hundreds of metres (yards) away, and knocked over an electricity pole.
Around 300 people organised an immediate protest nearby, crying "No to America, Yes to Islam!" One banner read: "The Americans are killing Iraqis with Saddam's weapons."
A local cleric, Sheikh Khaled Shumari, addressed the crowd, saying the Iraqis would reject further US intervention in Iraq.
|
News
