Iraqis deny US accounts of fierce fight with 'guerrillas'
By Phil Reeves in Samara
02 December 2003
To Ali Abdullah Amin, the accusations and denials that were yesterday flying
about the latest battle between the occupiers and occupied of Iraq - the
fiercest engagement, some say, since the early days of the US-led invasion -
were irrelevant.
He was not interested in whether the American military was telling the truth
when it said that its troops had killed 54 "attackers" - shorthand for Iraqi
guerrillas who carried out a double ambush against a US convoy in the Sunni
town of Samarra on Sunday which turned into a running fire fight.
Nor was he wondering about the denials made by Iraqi hospital officials and
policemen, in the face of what the Americans have presented as a crushing
defeat for the pro-Saddamists, Baathists, ex-soldiers and other fighters who
are violently opposing their presence.
Iraqi officials say only eight people died, including a 71-year-old Iranian
pilgrim called Fathollah Hejazi, whose charred passport they were showing to
all-comers. The old man had, it seems, come to visit the ancient gold-domed
Shi'ite mosque in this once-peaceful town on the banks of the Tigris.
Ali Abdullah Amin was interested in none of these things. What he cared
about, as he lay beneath a grubby yellow blanket in his hospital bed, was
the pain in his bandaged legs, both of which were seeping blood from bullet
wounds, and the hole in the left side of his stomach. "My legs hurt, my legs
hurt," the little boy moaned, as he cried in the arms of his 22-year-old
cousin, Jamal Karim.
He may also have been wondering about the whereabouts of his father,
Abdullah Amin al-Kurdi. Father and son were shot outside a small nearby
mosque, a spot now marked by a large congealed pool of blood. Father didn't
make it.
Iraqi witnesses were unanimous that Americans were to blame, pointing to a
hole in a nearby cemetery wall which looked like the work of a shell fired
from an Abrams tank. The US military stuck by its story of the battle, and
by its estimation of the Iraqi death toll. Fifty-four Iraqis died, it said,
all combatants. Major Gordon Tate, a spokesman at the headquarters of the
4th Infantry Division in Tikrit, insisted the US military was "confident"
about its assessment of the "battle damage".
"Soldiers and commanders on the site counted," he told The Independent.
"Every commander on the site is responsible for doing battle damage
assessment. Part of that includes counting the dead and wounded on both
sides."
Ali and his father appear to have slipped through the net. Even though the
boy's hospital bed is only 10 minutes away from the US Army's base in
Samarra, and although he was easily found by journalists, he does not appear
to be part of the "battle damage assessment". Asked about wounded Iraqi
civilians, Major Tate said he had no information on the subject.
As occupiers of Iraq, the US is responsible under international law for the
safety of the civilians living under its rule. The senior US military
commander, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, said this weekend that his
troops conduct follow-up visits to places where they have been involved in
fighting. But Ali's cousin, Jamal Karim, speaking yesterday afternoon, said
no US official had been to see him or the injured boy.
Nor, said Samarra's hospital information officer, Sa'id Hassan Ali
al-Janabi, had any "coalition" officials come to see any of the others
wounded on Sunday. Had they done so, they could have seen his list of the
injured - 55 names, including five women. These were, he insisted, all
civilians, some with light injuries but a few with wounds so critical that
they had been moved to hospitals in Baghdad or Tikrit.
Had the same officials visited Samarra's streets they could also have heard
many accounts of the battle that differed greatly from their own.
The US military says the ambushes began at 1.30pm when the 1st Battalion of
the 66th Armoured Regiment, accompanied by US military police, came under
attack from Iraqis on the east and west sides of Samarra. The guerrillas
fired mortars, improvised explosives, rocket-propelled grenades and
Kalashnikovs. The Americans replied by firing the 120mm cannon on their
Abrams tanks, the smaller 25mm automatic cannon on their Bradley fighting
vehicles, and an assortment of smallarms, mainly M-16 rifles and 9mm
pistols.
The US military blamed members of Saddam Hussein's fedayeen paramilitary
force. This appears to be based in part on the clothing of the dead,
although it sounded like the apparel of many young Arabs.
Iraqis in Samarra told a different story. Some of their accounts were easily
disprovable but there was consensus that the American troops fired randomly
at times, and that there were no uniformed Iraqi fighters in their midst.
Several detailed descriptions from Iraqis confirmed that guerrillas were
also firing on the Americans, and that there were prolonged fire fights.
One businessman said that it was started when the Iraqis ambushed the
Americans on the edge of town. Another, Mothana Mohammed Badie, a
32-year-old shopkeeper - said fighting erupted when US forces arrived to
deliver some new Iraqi dinars to a local bank, a view which coincides with
the American version.
He said he was in the area, but ran home to his wife and children only to
have his house shot up by a volley of .50 bullets from a passing Abrams
tank. Shortly afterwards he was joined by his father, Dr Mohammed Badie, the
vice-president of Tikrit University.
Dr Badiecalled the fedayeen "terrorists". But, as he stood in his partially
wrecked bullet-pocked front room, he appeared close to despair.
"All the people here are fed up and angry," he said. They want the Americans
out of town ... They [the Americans] have to respect our feelings and
traditions and customs, but we see the opposite. There is something here
that is hidden from the American public. They call it 'Tha'ar' - revenge.
That means that if anyone kills your friend, or your brother, you have to
avenge it by killing an American soldier."
This is, in the clichés of journalism, called the cycle of violence. And the
wheel is rotating with ever-increasing speed.
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