A representative for US central command today backed soldiers who shot seven women and children at a checkpoint and blamed the Iraqi regime for the killings.
Navy Captain Frank Thorp said initial reports indicated the soldiers from the US 3rd Infantry Division had acted properly in firing on a car that failed to stop at a checkpoint in the southern Iraqi desert near Najaf.
According to the US military, the soldiers motioned for the car to stop and fired warning shot when their commands were ignored. When those shots were ignored the soldiers fired shots into the car engine but it continued to drive towards the checkpoint.
The soldiers then fired into the passenger compartment of the vehicle.
Troops have been nervous, and have been ordered to be more cautious, after a suicide car bomb attack on Saturday killed four US soldiers at a checkpoint, also near Najaf.
Capt Throp blamed the killings – the worst single case of civilian deaths in the war to have been admitted by US forces so far – on Iraq’s guerrilla tactics and its practice of using women and children as shields.
”The most horrendous thing about this is that this is the result of what is apparently the strategy of the regime to challenge us at checkpoints, which has caused us to be on our toes and ensure that these are not suicide bombers,” he said.
”So the blood of this incident is on the regime of Saddam Hussein.”
But a different account was provided by the Washington Post. Its report quoted the US captain at the intersection as saying his forward platoon had failed to give the van ample notice that it would be shelled.
”You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn’t fire a warning shot soon enough!” it quoted Captain Ronny Johnson telling his platoon leader.
In another incident US marines today said that they had shot dead an unarmed Iraqi who drove his pick-up truck at speed towards a checkpoint in the southern town of Shatra.
”I thought it was a suicide bomb,” one of the soldiers who fired on the vehicle told Reuters.
British army representative Colonel Chris Vernon said that the killings undermined attempts to win over the local population, but added that US and British forces would be fully supported if they defended themselves against a perceived threat.
”We must allow our junior commanders who are doing the business on the ground to make these split-second decisions as they think best,” he told the BBC.
Pictures of injured and dead civilians, broadcast across the Muslim world by Arabic satellite channels, have fuelled opposition to the war and sparked angry protests.
More bombing of Iraqi cities
The southern outskirts of Baghdad were hit by two explosions at dawn today. The blasts followed a night of bombing targeting the heart of the Iraqi capital and Republican Guard units thought to be dug in ready to face US troops advancing from the south.
A heavy detonation broke a post-dawn lull about 9am local time (0600 BST).
In a midnight raid, five huge blasts hit the centre of the city and one of Saddam Hussein’s sprawling compounds on the banks of the river Tigris.
The complex, used by President Saddam, his son Qusay and aides, has been hit several times in the last 48 hours. It was also struck by missiles in the opening days of the campaign.
”A big, big, big cloud of smoke is coming out of the compound. Maybe they are using bigger bombs than before,” Reuters reporter Samia Nakhoul said last night.
Another explosion came from the headquarters of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, which is headed by President Saddam’s eldest son, Uday. Human rights activists have accused him of jailing and torturing athletes there.
Iraq’s information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, said today that 19 people had been killed and more than 100 injured in US-led air raids on Baghdad over the past day.
US warplanes later attacked targets close to Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Local Kurds said the planes could be targeting an Iraqi arms depot but this could not be confirmed.
The push to Baghdad
While the aerial assault has raged, US-led land troops said that they were within 50 miles of Baghdad, close to the Republican Guard defending the capital.
Reuters correspondents with US military units said US troops yesterday fought Iraqi soldiers firing from buildings and foxholes around a bridge over the Euphrates river at Hindiya. This is the closest to the capital that ground fighting has been reported.
US troops have also advanced to the outskirts of Hilla, about 60 miles south of Baghdad.
Iraq reported fierce fighting in and around the city of Nassiriya, 235 miles south-east of the capital, and said that invading troops had suffered heavy casualties.
”The blood of the enemy is flowing profusely,” a military spokesman said on Iraqi state television. ”God bless your hands. Victory will be yours. God is by your side.”
Nassiriya, which is on the Euphrates, is strategically important because two main roads in the area are vital for getting supplies to invading troops further north.
Basra under siege
Iraqi civilians fleeing the southern city today said that they faced pressure from members of the ruling Ba’ath party not to rise up against President Saddam.
”The Ba’ath party has been going around Basra and using megaphones to warn us that we had better join the war effort,” an Iraqi resident, who declined to give his name, told a Reuters correspondent at an army checkpoint on the outskirts of the city.
”They’ve told us we should not try to rebel against the government,” he said.
Another man leaving Basra said secret police had made a number of arrests over the past few days.
”They are entering our homes and asking us about relatives, asking us why our relatives are not fighting against the Americans and British. There is an internal terror campaign inside Basra,” he said.
But resistance has continued in the city, confounding British and US hopes that the Shia people of southern Iraq would repeat their 1991 revolt against President Saddam’s largely Sunni leadership. That revolt was brutally put down.
Col Vernon – the British army spokesman – said the strategy adopted by British troops in the south of Iraq was to target Ba’ath officials and the Fedayeen militia.
”We have got to drive a wedge between the hardline Ba’ath party and the militia they are controlling, and the civilian population who are intimidated by them,” he said. ”That really enshrines everything we are trying to do here.”
British forces have besieged Basra since reaching its outskirts at the start of the 13-day-old war and fought with troops defending it.
The Iraqi military also claims to have inflicted heavier casualties on US and British forces near Basra than the two allies have admitted.
”The Americans and British sustained heavy casualties in Abul Khasib, south of Basra. Their corpses were still lying on the ground of the battlefield,” a military spokesman said.
Elsewhere in the south, military officials said normal life was resuming in Zubayr after British troops took control there.
”Our troops are now patrolling in berets, no longer are they in helmets and normality is coming back. Shops are opening, bakeries are opening, schools are opening,” said Group Captain Al Lockwood in Qatar.
British casualty
Another British soldier has been killed in southern Iraq, bringing the total British death toll to 26, it was announced today.
Excluding the latest casualty, 25 British soldiers had died in the 13-day-old war so far, five in action and 20 in accidents or ”friendly fire”.
Exile plea to Saddam
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister today called for an end to the war, urging President Saddam to step down to spare Iraq more bloodshed.
”If his staying in power [is] the only thing that brings problems to his country, we expect that he would respond to a sacrifice for his country, as he requires any citizen there to sacrifice for his country,” Prince Saud al-Faisal told the US ABC News channel.
”This war can only lead to strife, to bloodshed and to increased hatred,” he said.
Iraqi state television today denied rumours that President Saddam had already fled with his family. ”[It] is a repeat of a lie that was previously voiced by the Pentagon,” the statement said.
”The immediate family of leader Saddam Hussein is part and parcel of the great and larger Iraqi family.” – Guardian Unlimited Â