IRAQ WAR BRIEFS

Death in Fallujah rising, doctors say

According to Dr. Rafa’ah al-Iyssaue, director of the main hospital in Fallujah, the hospital emergency team has recovered more than 700 bodies from rubble where houses and shops once stood, adding that more than 550 were women and children. He said a very small number of men were found in these places and most were elderly.

Doctors at the hospital say that many bodies had been found in a mutilated condition, some without legs or arms. Two babies were found at their homes, who are believed to have died from malnutrition, according to a specialist at the hospital.

Al-Iyssaue added these numbers were only from nine neighborhoods of the city and that 18 others had not yet been reached, as they were waiting for help from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) to make it easier for them to enter. He explained that many of the dead had been already buried by civilians from the Garma and Amirya districts of Fallujah after approval from US-led forces nearly three weeks ago, and those bodies had not been counted. IRCS officials told IRIN in a Jan. 4 report that they needed more time to give an accurate death toll, adding that the city was completely uninhabitable. (IRIN)

Leader of Allawi’s party assassinated

The manager of the Iraqi National Accord party, headed by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, was assassinated on Jan. 9 near his home in Baghdad.

Sources close to the party said masked gunmen tailed the car of General Jassem al-Obaidi, who was accompanied by his daughter, and riddled him with bullets.

They said his daughter, who was on her way to school, was seriously injured and was reported in critical condition in a Baghdad hospital. (UPI)

US soldiers ‘told to lie’ in abuse probe

A senior US army officer has been accused of ordering soldiers to lie to investigators probing an incident in which two Iraqi civilians were pushed from a bridge into the Tigris River.

Testifying before a military trial over alleged abuse of Iraqis by US forces, Major Robert Gwinner said Lieutenant-Colonel Nate Sassaman had ordered soldiers to lie about the bridge incident to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, or CID.

The major was testifying in the court martial of army Sergeant First Class Tracy Perkins, who faces more than 25 years in military prison on charges of involuntary manslaughter, aggravated assault and obstruction of justice.

Perkins is accused of killing Zaidun Hassun, 19, by having subordinates force him off a ledge above the Tigris at Samarra in Iraq.

Marwan Fadil, who was also forced off the bridge along with his cousin Hassun, testified on Jan. 5 that US soldiers tossed the two at gunpoint into the water and laughed as his relative drowned.

The two Iraqis had been detained shortly before an 11pm curfew on Jan. 3, 2004.

Punishing curfew violators by pushing them into water was probably within troops’ discretion, Gwinner said. (Al Jazeera)

US troops wounded in Iraq tops 10,000

The number of US troops wounded in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003 has surpassed 10,000, the Pentagon said Jan. 4 in a delayed update of its casualty data.

Of the 10,252 total wounded, the Pentagon said 5,396 were unable to return to duty and 4,856 sustained injuries that were light enough to allow them to resume their duties. The total is normally reported each week, but the Pentagon had not updated the figures since Dec. 22, when the number of wounded stood at 9,981. (AP)

Witness: CIA and SEALs beat

Navy SEALs and CIA officials kicked, punched, choked and gouged the eyes of detainees in 2003 at a US military base in Iraq, a former SEAL testified on Jan. 10.

The witness said he saw the “interrogation by means of abuse” take place in 2003 at Camp Jenny Pozzi, the SEAL base at Baghdad International Airport.

He said a prisoner under interrogation by the CIA in October 2003 was abused by two or three SEALs.

On another occasion a month later, the witness said, he watched for 10 minutes as SEALs punched, choked and poked their fingers in the eye of Iraqi Manadel al-Jamadi, who also was punched by a CIA official when he did not answer questions.

The former SEAL, who was not identified, was the government’s main witness at the Jan. 10 Article 32 hearing. The hearing was for a Navy SEAL lieutenant who is accused of assault, maltreatment and conduct unbecoming an officer for his handling of detainees, including al-Jamadi. (AP)

Media gag on Iraqi abuse cases

The British public is not allowed to be told evidence heard against British soldiers at a court martial in Germany on Jan. 10 after a judge imposed reporting restrictions on the press.

The cases are against four members of the British Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, accused of torturing and sexually abusing their captives.

In what has been dubbed “Britain’s Abu Ghraib,” the soldiers are alleged to have stripped and humiliated their prisoners and taken pictures of the incident, which took place in a warehouse outside Basra last year.

One image reportedly shows an Iraqi man being forced to perform oral sex on a British soldier.

As the case began against Fusilier Gary Bartlam, 19, of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, who is accused of ill-treatment of Iraqi civilians, a British Ministry of Defense (MoD) prosecutor asked deputy judge advocate general Michael Hunter to gag the press. The judge pointed out that his decision was “for legal reasons” and he would allow the details to be reported at a later date. He claimed his decision was “not motivated by any interest of the MoD or the government or the army.” (Guardian (UK))

Iraqi Sunni party official killed

A senior official of Iraq’s main Sunni Muslim party, which last month withdrew from the Jan. 30 election it wants postponed, has been abducted and killed.

The Iraqi Islamic Party said that Umar Mahmud Abd Allah, a cleric who has written a number of books on Islam, was snatched from his pharmacy in the northern city of Mosul and killed on Jan. 4.

A party official said Abd Allah was shot in the head after he was seized.

The party pulled out of the January poll fearing persistent bloodshed would deter Iraqis in the Sunni north and west from casting their ballots, skewing the outcome and undermining its credibility.

While the Iraqi Islamic Party has withdrawn from the January poll, it remains a firm supporter of the transition to democracy in Iraq. (Al Jazeera)

Insurgent attacks on oil industry cost Iraq $8 billion

Insurgent attacks on Iraq’s oil industry have cost the country nearly $8 billion in lost export revenue since the March 2003 US-led invasion, Oil Minister Thamer Abbas Ghadban said on Jan. 2.

“Exports are now limited only to the south, there are no exports in the north,” Ghadban said. (AFP)

Top Baghdad police officer killed

Armed fighters assassinated Baghdad’s deputy police chief outside his home in southern Baghdad on Jan. 10.

Brigadier Amir Nayif and his son were shot dead as they left their family home, with Nayif dying 10 minutes after he was transferred to a local hospital.

Nayif’s son, Lieutenant Khalid, died immediately after being hit by several bullets. Their car crashed into a house after they were shot.

Witnesses to the Baghdad deputy police’s chief’s killing said Brigadier Nayif was not guarded, making himself an easy target for fighters who escaped after the attack. (Aljazeera)

Report paints bleak picture of Iraqi forces

The US State Department’s quarterly report to Congress paints a bleak picture of Iraqi security forces in the run-up to this month’s election, and Bush administration officials and specialists now acknowledge it could take years to prepare viable police and military units unless the current training program improves dramatically.

In some of the most violent areas of the country, Iraqi forces have been “rendered ineffective,” the State Department wrote in the report dated Jan. 5. Due to intimidation and attacks by insurgents, “large numbers” of police, highway patrol, and border enforcement personnel “have quit or abandoned their stations,” it said.

Pentagon officials now acknowledge that most of the 121,000 Iraqi security forces that have been trained so far are substandard and have little chance of standing up to insurgents.

Congressional officials have expressed rising alarm in recent days that they are not being informed on the full extent of the training problems. (Boston Globe)

Iraqi police academy bombed in Hilla

At least 22 people were killed and others injured in a car bomb targeting a police academy in Hilla, south of Baghdad on Jan. 5, during a graduation ceremony.

District police spokesman Hadi Hatif said at least four cars and three nearby buildings were hit by the blast. (Al Jazeera)

More Iraqi officials call for election delay

With unceasing violence in Iraq, an increasing number of Iraqi interim government officials are calling for the postponement of Jan. 30 elections. On Jan. 4, the interim president urged the United Nations to assess the feasibility of the elections, an indication of how deeply insurgent attacks have shaken the resolve behind the polls. The country’s electoral commission, and the United States, insist that voting take place as scheduled.

Sunni Arab clerics have called for a boycott and Iraq’s largest Sunni political party announced it was pulling out of the race because of poor security that has seen insurgents kill scores of Iraqi security forces, as well as several election officials, in recent weeks.

“Definitely the United Nations, as an independent umbrella of legitimacy... should really take the responsibility by seeing whether that (timing) is possible or not,” said interim President Ghazi al-Yawar.

Yawar, whose post is largely ceremonial, said the elections would fail if a raging insurgency kept a significant number of Iraqis away from voting stations.

Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations, Samir al-Sumaidaie, suggested last week the election could be delayed by two or three weeks. (MSNBC)

Ukraine to pull all 1,600 troops from Iraq

Ukraine’s outgoing president ordered officials on Jan. 10 to draw up plans to withdraw the country’s 1,600 troops home from Iraq in the first half of 2005 after eight of its soldiers were killed in a blast the day before.

Leonid Kuchma told his defense and foreign ministers to draw up the plans in an emergency meeting after the blast which also killed a Kazakh.

Kuchma is due to turn over power this month to president-elect Viktor Yushchenko, who has long said he would bring the troops home and said he would make the withdrawal a priority as soon as he takes office.

The Ukrainian contingent is one of the largest in a multinational division under Polish command, whose numbers have already fallen to just 6,000. Poland says it will draw down its contingent, which now numbers 2,400. (Reuters)