[Media-watch] US bomb mistakenly kills Iraqi civilians - Washington Post/San Francisco Chronicle - 9/01/05

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/01/09/MNGM1ANKII1.DTL



U.S. bomb mistakenly destroys home in village, killing civilians
Sunni official found slain after journey to visit ayatollah

Karl Vick, Washington Post

Sunday, January 9, 2005

Baghdad -- A U.S. warplane mistakenly dropped a 500-pound bomb Saturday on a 
house in a village near the northern city of Mosul, killing several Iraqis, 
according to witnesses and the U.S. military.

South of Baghdad, meanwhile, insurgents abducted and killed a Sunni Muslim 
official as he returned from a trip to persuade a Shiite Muslim leader to 
support delaying Iraq's Jan. 30 election.

The air strike by an F-16 fighter plane early Saturday on the village of 
Aitha, 30 miles south of Mosul, was part of "a cordon and search operation 
to capture an anti-Iraqi force cell leader," the military said in a 
statement. The satellite-guided bomb struck a house that "was not the 
intended target. ... The intended target was another location nearby."

The statement said that five people had been killed and that the military 
"deeply regretted the loss of possibly innocent lives."

Ali Yousef, the homeowner, told Associated Press Television News that the 
air strike had happened at about 2:30 a.m. and that American troops had 
immediately surrounded the area, blocking access for four hours. The brick 
house was reduced to a pile of rubble, according to an Associated Press 
photographer at the scene.

An Associated Press photographer said from the scene that 14 members of the 
same family -- seven children, four women and three men -- had been killed, 
and six people had been wounded, including another child in the house and 
five people from neighboring houses. By evening, all 14 victims had been 
buried in a nearby cemetery, Yousef said.

The U.S. military statement said coalition forces had gone to the area to 
provide assistance and said five people had been killed. It said there was 
no other damage.

The conflicting death tolls could not be independently reconciled, and the 
military said an investigation of the incident was under way.

Later Saturday, on the highway between Baghdad and the holy city of Najaf to 
the south, the body of Ali Ghalib, the head of the provincial council for 
Salahuddin province, was found riddled with bullets.

Ghalib was abducted on the road Friday afternoon while returning to Tikrit 
from Najaf, where he had sought to persuade Grand Ayatollah Ali al- Sistani 
to support a six-month delay in the nationwide ballot, according to Shuaib 
Dujaili, a Tikrit official who had been traveling on the same road.

The fate of three Iraqis accompanying Ghalib -- the deputy dean of Tikrit 
University's law school, another official and their driver -- could not be 
determined.

"I was driving on the same road last night, and I saw the gunmen stop them 
and put weapons in their faces," said an employee of the Tikrit health 
directorate. "I was about to go and tell the armed men that these are good 
people in order to save them, but my friend sitting next to me said: 'Don't 
be a fool. Do you want them to kill us?' "

The attack was a grim reminder of differences among the various Sunni groups 
that oppose holding the ballot on schedule.

Ghalib traveled to Najaf on behalf of Sunni political leaders who argue that 
violence in their areas -- much of it carried out by Sunni insurgents intent 
on thwarting an election that is likely to hand power to the country's 
Shiite majority -- will prevent many Sunnis from voting.

A U.S. general this week acknowledged that four largely Sunni provinces 
currently lacked the stability to carry out balloting.

The tally by Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz did not include Babil province, south of 
Baghdad. That province's northern reaches have been dubbed the "triangle of 
death" by Iraqi travelers because of the frequent attacks on the road 
through it.

Relatives of Ghalib said insurgent contacts had relayed word to them that 
Ghalib had been kidnapped by al Qaeda in Iraq, headed by Abu Musab 
al-Zarqawi, whom the U.S. military blames for leading the Sunni insurgency. 
Ghalib's body was found Saturday in Latifiya.

Nearby, in the village of Mahaweel, a car bomb exploded near a roadblock 
manned by Iraqi police and soldiers. The Interior Ministry said one Iraqi 
civilian was killed and 20 were wounded, while Reuters quoted the police as 
saying four civilians had been killed.

In Basra, in the south, gunmen tried to assassinate Majid Atamimi, a local 
government official and candidate for the national election, when he left 
the governor's office to head home. He escaped, but his four bodyguards were 
killed.

In Baquba, an insurgent hot spot 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, authorities 
found the headless body of a man who had worked as a translator for the U.S. 
Army, according to Ahmed Foad, a physician at the local hospital.

Saturday's deaths -- in the Aitha and car bombings and gunfire attacks --  
ended a brutal week of assassinations, suicide bombings and other assaults. 
The attacks killed about 100 people, mostly Iraqi security troops, who are 
seen by the militants as collaborators with the American occupiers.

U.S. forces built up their operations and forces last week in and around 
Mosul, which has been particularly violent in recent weeks.

Mosul is in Nineveh, one of the four provinces that U.S. officials have said 
are still not secure enough for voting. The other provinces are Anbar, 
Baghdad and Salahuddin, which includes Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's ancestral 
hometown.

The spokesman for the Iraqi election commission, Fareed Ayar, said Saturday 
that there would be 5,220 polling centers on election day everywhere in Iraq 
but Anbar province, where the Sunni-dominated towns of Ramadi and Fallujah 
are located. Arrangements have not yet been made for polling centers in 
Anbar, he said.

The election is the first democratic vote in Iraq since the country was 
formed in 1932, and the Sunnis are certain to lose their dominance to the 
Shiites, who make up 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people. Sunni leaders 
have urged the vote be postponed, largely because areas of Iraq where they 
dominate are far too restive for preparations to begin.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.



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