US attacks on civilians fuel calls for withdrawal

Compiled by Shane Perlowin

Jan. 12 (AGR) — On Wed. Jan. 5, four Iraqis were injured after US helicopters bombed residential buildings in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil. The bombing damaged the building where students of Salah al-Din University live, in the Sidawa neighborhood.

The building and other nearby houses were set ablaze and some nearby cars were also damaged.

Four students were injured in the two-hour-long strike, officials said. The attack came after a US helicopter had come under fire from the same area, witnesses said.

Seven US soldiers were killed when a massive roadside bomb exploded under an armored vehicle in Baghdad and two Marines were killed in Anbar province on Jan. 7, the military said, bringing the number of US troops killed on that day to nine . It was the deadliest day for US forces in Iraq since a suicide bomber struck a mess hall Dec. 21.

The nine soldiers killed also made Jan. 7 the deadliest day in 2005 for US forces in Iraq so far.

The roadside bomb exploded beneath a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, killing everyone inside the heavily armored troop carrier. The attack came in northwest Baghdad, a section of the capital that includes a Sunni Muslim neighborhood with a substantial presence of insurgents.

The spike in US deaths came on the day that Iraq’s interim government announced it was extending martial law through Jan. 30, the date set for nationwide elections.

Roadside bombs emerged early in the Iraq war as a particularly lethal weapon for insurgents, even against a US force wreathed in armor. Pentagon statistics show that 80 percent of US service members killed in Iraq suffered blast injuries, which also could include mortars and other artillery.

A plurality of fatal injuries have been wounds to the head. Combat surgeons have observed that roadside bombs, by detonating upward, send shrapnel and gravel into the brain through the face and eyes.

Also on Jan. 7, six members of the Iraqi National Guard were killed.

Four guardsmen were killed when their patrol was targeted by an explosive in the Abu Ghraib neighborhood west of Baghdad.

Two guardsmen and a civilian were also killed in battles with armed groups in Samarra north of Baghdad.

In the northern city of Mosul, US and Iraqi National Guard forces raided the Saad Bin Maath mosque after Jan. 7 prayers. They were searching for the mosque’s imam, who was not there at the time.

In another attack on US personnel, a US military vehicle, part of a US patrol, was damaged in the Samilat district in Abu Ghraib when an explosive device was detonated by fighters. And, a house used as a base by US troops in the Zaidan district in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, came under heavy mortar fire. Eyewitnesses said a number of US soldiers were hit in the attack.

On Jan. 8, residents of a northern Iraqi village said that an overnight air strike, which the US admitted was a mistake, had killed 14 civilians.

The US military said it dropped a 500-pound laser-guided bomb on a house, mistaking it for a nearby suspected hideout of fighters. Five people were killed.

An official from a joint US-Iraqi security center for Salahuddin province put the toll at 13, including four women and three children. He said the dead were all from the same family.

Reuters pictures showed a house in the village of Aaytha, southeast of the northern city of Mosul, reduced to rubble.

They also showed rows of freshly dug graves where locals said the dead had been buried. The dead included seven children, according to an AP photographer at the scene.

“The house was not the intended target for the air strike. The intended target was another location nearby,” the military said on Jan. 8. “Multi-National Force Iraq deeply regrets the loss of possibly innocent lives.”

It was a rare admission for the US military. When at least 40 people were killed in a bombing raid on a house in a village near the Syrian border last year, the military said the dead were “foreign fighters,” while several witnesses said they were guests at a wedding.

Earlier in the day a human bomber killed four people near a checkpoint south of Baghdad and anti-US fighters abducted three senior Iraqi officials.

On Jan. 9, US troops opened fire near a checkpoint after their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb. A hospital official said at least eight civilians were killed in the second mistaken US attack in two days to have deadly results.

US commanders recently said they were changing tactics in the way they respond to roadside bombings. Rather than pushing on after the blast, they now stop and try to engage the perpetrators, who may have detonated the explosives remotely.

Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said the convoy was hit near a police checkpoint in Yussifiyah, nine miles south of Baghdad. Troops opened fire, and killed two police officers and three civilians.

Dr. Anmar Abdul-Hadi of the al-Yarmouk hospital said eight people were killed in the attack and 12 were wounded.

The incident came less than 24 hours after the mis-aimed US bomb incident, in which the above-mentioned house was destroyed in the north of the country.

Combined, the incidents will feed calls that US forces set a date for their withdrawal, a demand made by several Iraqi political factions during the run-up to the Jan. 30 elections.

On Jan. 10, the conservative Sunni organization, the Association of Muslim Scholars, joined the calls after meeting US representatives to demand a timetable for withdrawal. The group was reported to have said it would abandon its election boycott in return for a departure date for US forces.

However, despite the rhetoric about withdrawal, a senior US official said last week that representatives of Iraqi political groups in regular contact with the embassy were not pushing for a departure date, while Iyad Allawi, prime minister, argues that most Iraqis support the presence of foreign forces.

Sources: Guardian (UK), Washington Post, Financial Times/UK, Aljazeera, Associated Press, MSNBC