15 of a family among 56 civilians killed: Pick-up blown up, Hilla town bombed
HILLA (Iraq) April 1: Thirty-three people, including women and children, died and 310 were wounded in a coalition bombing on the outskirts of the farming town of Hilla, 80 kilometres south of the capital on Tuesday, local hospital director Murtada Abbas said.
He was speaking at the Hilla hospital where a large number of children lay wounded under blankets on the floor due to a shortage of beds.
Fifteen members of one family were killed nearby late Monday when their pickup truck was blown up by a rocket from a US Apache helicopter in the region of Haidariya near Hilla, the sole survivor of the attack said.
Razek al-Kazem al-Khafaji, sitting among 15 coffins in the local hospital, said he lost his wife, six children, his father, his mother, his three brothers and their wives.
The British and US air strikes on Baghdad accounted for a further 19 people dead and more than 100 wounded since Monday evening, Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf said on the 13th day of the US-led attempt to unseat Saddam Hussein and disarm Iraq.
US troops admitted killing seven women and children when they opened fire on Monday on a civilian vehicle at a military checkpoint manned by the US Army’s Third Infantry Division at Najaf.
Reports of coalition forces killing dozens of Iraqi civilians on Tuesday stoked growing international unease at the US-led war.
Minister Sahaf said U.S.-led air raids over the past day had killed a total of 56 civilians throughout the country. Iraq has put the total civilian deaths to date at 653 but there was no way to independently verify this figure. Baghdad has issued no numbers of its military casualties.
Reuters reporters taken by Iraqi officials to a hospital in the town of Hilla saw 11 bodies, apparently civilians. Residents said they were killed when U.S. bombs hit the residential area. Sahaf said nine of the dead were children.
The British government admitted for the first time that Iraqi civilians may see US-British forces as villains not liberators.
“We know that for the moment we will be seen as the villains. We knew that from the reaction before the conflict started,” Home Secretary David Blunkett told BBC television on Monday.
In Brussels the European Commission called the checkpoint killings “a horrible and tragic incident... It is not an isolated incident. Too many civilians have already lost their lives in this war.
US Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles Owens, speaking at operational headquarters in Qatar, said US troops opened fire “as a last resort” after the civilian vehicle failed to stop at a military post despite repeated warning shots fired by US troops. Four people in the vehicle escaped unharmed.
The Washington Post quoted US Army 3rd Division Captain Ronny Johnson as shouting over the radio to his men after the shooting: “You just (expletive) killed a family because you didn’t fire a warning shot soon enough.”
In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said US President George W. Bush regretted the deaths of Iraqi civilians but “recognizes that most innocents have been lost in this war at the hands of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen”.
US APOLOGIZES: The top US military commander in Washington expreassed his regrets to the families of the seven women and children shot dead at a US military roadblock in Iraq. “I extend my regrets to the families of Iraqis killed yesterday,” said General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff.
“The climate established by the Iraqi regime contributed to this incident,” he said at a Pentagon news conference.
BOMBARDMENT: The southern outskirts of Baghdad were pounded by an especially intense bombardment that sent balls of fire and towers of black smoke into the sky.
Massive explosions rocked the area around 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) in what was at least the third wave of bombings since dawn.
Saddam’s main presidential palace complex in the Iraqi capital, a potent symbol of his iron 24-year rule, came under fresh daylight bombardment.
US officers said 200 Iraqis were killed, wounded or captured in the clashes which broke out overnight on Monday near Karbala, 80 kilometers from Baghdad.
RESISTANCE: British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw warned that as US and British troops advance on Baghdad they will face fierce resistance and could experience setbacks.
“There may be more setbacks for coalition troops,” Straw said in a speech to the Newspaper Society annual conference.
In the north, coalition warplanes kept up heavy airstrikes on Iraqi army positions in and around the oil centre of Kirkuk, rebel Kurdish officials said.
In the southern town of Basra, seen as key to controlling the southeast, British troops said they were waiting for reinforcements before making a final push to take the city.
An Iraqi military spokesman said at least 54 US and British soldiers had been killed in fighting since Sunday, most of them around Basra, with an unspecified number of others killed in other parts of Iraq.
Officials in London said a British soldier was killed on duty in southern Iraq, taking to 26 the British death toll since the start of the war. US authorities say at least 39 US soldiers have been killed.
US Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told reporters in Qatar that US forces had captured an Iraqi general in fighting in the Karbala region.—AFP
