Two Different Accounts of Deadly Airstrike in Baghdad
BAGHDAD - For the battered working-class district of Abu Dshir, Ramadan evenings bring a rare air of festivity. The temperature is still warm, but the heat of summer has abated. Families stroll outdoors, and young men play nightly matches of a traditional Ramadan game called mihaidis, in which teams try to find a hidden ring. 
As the teams lined up Thursday for the game, neighborhood residents said, a crowd of men gathered to watch. They lighted a large oil lamp which illuminated the street, a small shopping area where grocers and fruit vendors stay open late this time of year.
Two American helicopters hovered overhead, witnesses said.
Moments after the game began, the helicopters opened fire on the crowd, the witnesses said.
Seven men were killed, Sayyid Malik Abadi, the head of the district security committee, who arrived at the scene shortly after the episode, said Friday. He said perhaps an eighth man had died as well, but too many body parts were scattered about to be certain exactly how many were killed.
“The helicopters watched, and they thought it was a gathering and fired on it,” Mr. Abadi said. “They fired rockets. When people started to run, the helicopters’ machine guns began shooting at the people who were running.”
The American military had a different version of events, which took place in the Saha part of the Abu Dshir district. A spokesman said that earlier in the evening American forces had twice observed episodes when two or three men fired mortars into the neighborhood to the north. After the second episode, the military called for an airstrike.
“We assess possibly two or three were killed or wounded,” said Maj. Brad Leighton, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad. “We were not able to get an accurate assessment,” he added.
“Collateral damage was not observed, but it is a possibility,” Major Leighton said. “If some innocents were killed, we regret that.”
The Abu Dshir district, a district that is majority Shiite, is largely controlled by the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, according to people who live there. However, members of the Mahdi Army in Abu Dshir have been observing the cease-fire ordered by Mr. Sadr in August, neighbors said. No one in the neighborhood appeared to be armed during a reporter’s visit on Friday, although a few wore the black shirt and pants that the Mahdi Army often favors.
Hussein Jassim, 61, a shop owner, said the militia members in the area were no longer active. “All the world knows that the Mahdi Army has been frozen on the orders of our leader Sayyied Moktada al-Sadr, so targeting this gathering, and saying they are Mahdi Army fighters, is all a lie,” he said.
On Friday morning, relatives and neighbors gathered to escort the men’s coffins to the neighborhood’s Shiite mosque. The coffins arrived at the mosque in the back of pickup trucks.
A crowd of men in loose T-shirts and sandals stood silently watching the trucks as they approached. Men from the family stood among the coffins. On one truck was a boy, crying hysterically. Mr. Abadi said three of the boy’s brothers had been killed.
The violence on Thursday occurred a little before 8 p.m., after families had finished breaking the daily Ramadan fast, according to eyewitnesses. For Ahmed Abdullah, 37, a taxi driver, who was also near the scene, confusion mixed with anger and grief. On Friday, he stood watching the coffins being loaded back onto the trucks to be driven for burial to Najaf, a city holy to Shiites.
“It was a real massacre of innocent people, without clear reason,” he said. “I lost my brother-in-law - he was the father of three kids and he was just watching the game. May God revenge the bloodshed of those martyrs.”
Elsewhere in Baghdad on Friday, five bodies were found.
American forces also announced that they had killed a man they described as a senior terrorist in an airstrike in Musayyib, south of Baghdad, on Tuesday. The military said that the man, Abu Osama al-Tunisi, was a leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown extremist group whose leadership has foreign ties, according to American intelligence.
In Ankara, Turkey, on Friday, Iraq and Turkey signed an agreement to cooperate in fighting the Kurdish separatist group P.K.K. along their shared border, but the agreement did not include a provision allowing the Turkish Army to conduct cross-border operations against the Kurdish group.
Reporting was contributed by Andrew E. Kramer and Kareem Hilmi in Baghdad, Sebnem Arsu in Istanbul, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Where is the outrage? We are a disgusting lot here in the U.S. in that we do nothing to stop this sort of action allegedly to keep us safe. How does murdering unarmed people enjoying an evening outside make us safer?
Here’s your ‘brave boys’ in action.
Listen to the ‘commentary’.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QCyzvTJguCs
Don’tcha just feel proudern’shit.
I believe it is against the Geneva Conventions, and probably against the UN Charter, for an army of occupation to bomb the civilian populace. Of course, the Bush/Cheney crime family does not recognize any treaty or humane law that this country has signed. It was Thomas Jefferson who said “Treaties are the supreme law of the land”.
I am so ashamed to be a citizen of the US.
Well, I guess this is one way to ‘win the hearts and minds of the people’, but for whom?
But then they are just ‘collateral damage’.
There are many reasons for the fast of Ramadan, but one reason is, by your hunger and thirst from first light to sundown you are brought to appreciate the sufferings of the poor who may not have food, or drink, or a place to lay their head.
Appreciating this, you will help the less fortunate. You will see that no one goes hungry or thirsty, if you have the means to prevent it. You will give space for one to sleep, protected from the elements.
Each evening, as the sun sets, the people rejoice, for they may break their fast. That is the time for party, for play, for giving thanks for what you have, however much or little and sharing with your neighbor.
This is only one of the lessons of the Holy Qu’ran. It is so sad that we, from the West, teach such a different lesson, of ignorance and cruelty and greed. Let us hope that that lesson is discarded by the peoples of the Middle East, once we are gone from their countries. (May it be soon)
Truth is the first casualty of war.
There is a massive karmic debt accumulating. How it will be paid back is anyone’s guess. Those who pulled that trigger have to live with themselves. My guess would be many of them end up adding to the numbers of suicides of former service members we keep hearing about.
“He said perhaps an eighth man had died as well, but too many body parts were scattered about to be certain exactly how many were killed.”
What the fuck??? How dare you, ignorant invading psychopaths! It’s murder, not “collateral damage.” Murder!
And the ignorant American masses will ask, “Why do they hate us?”
These dealings prove US soldiers are chi–ck–en s-h- i t. They are gutless a h’ s who would rather kill helpless people than stand up for what is right.Be sure they get lots of medals and adoration whren they return home, the f’in cowards.
the republican cultist party and their members love it. they are making america safer. what a joke!Don’t blame the military. they are trained to kill…anyone. Most in the military are psychopaths anyway. so what affect does a few hundred thousand dead innocent women and children? Euphoria, high fives and parties afterwards along with medals telling where and when they killed those innocent children. What is the saying the Marines use: kill’em all: let God sort it out. I hope those marines like hell cause that’s where they’re headed along with their furher, Bush. Heil Bush!
lover of peace says:
“We are a disqusting lot here in the U.S. in that we do nothing to stop this sort of action…”
Io Q. Lellity says:
“…you, ignorant invading psychopaths! It’s murder….”
laddy says:
“Don’t blame the military.”
From my perspective Bush and most of the Federal government are murderers, including all of the Democrats that voted to keep funding the ongoing slaughter. All of the military, certainly those in Iraq, and not just those pulling the triggers, are accomplices to murder.
However, while the US government and the military have been invading other countries and murdering innocent people throughout the history of the United States, concerned citizens have always continued to blame whoever is running the government at the time, and/or the military, for atrocities while at the same time they claim we have a “democracy” or “representative” government.
Folks, democracy and representative government means we the people. We vote them in, we allow them to murder in our names. One respondent to CD claims she is “tired of being blamed.” Its nothing personal, there are people in the US that aren’t to blame. These are few in number, and most responders here can probably be counted among them. But the majority?
The majority of US citizens are, like their military, accomplices to murder for profit, for a job, comforts, low prices, “the American way.”
The majority of the people have a culture that finds violence as entertainment in books, magazines, newspapers, movies, sports, TV programs, and TV “news.” Violence is popular: not just accepted as a part of the culture, but welcomed, sought after. Until the culture is radically changed by the majority, the US will continue to have as it has had for over two centuries, a nation of murderers.
Talk here, but also talk to people in your life: friends, relatives, strangers, anyone. Add your body and your time and your votes to those politicians and/or political parties who are passionately against a culture of violence.
And don’t expect a radical change soon, nor even in your lifetime. It can take a very long time to change a culture.
Sorry if I don’t trust the official version, I just don’t believe these people!
Whoa, lets hold on here. Iraq AND Afghanistan were war crimes if you follow our own tenets set up at Nuremburg in 1945-46. So, before we get too outraged at troops trained to do as we saw, thrown into this situation by old men who are nothing more than greedy and callous, let’s see some outrage for BOTH political parties who are BOTH complicit in allowing 9-11 and both wars to ensue. Each misstep along the way is the responsibility of Americans. Own it and take a stand.
“If some innocents were killed, we regret that.”
Time to call it what it is: TERRORISM.
Pure and simple.
Support the troops?
Not at all. THE TROOPS ARE TERRORISTS.
VICTORY TO THE RESISTANCE!
VICTORY TO THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ!
“The military said that the man [killed in another air strike], Abu Osama al-Tunisi, was a leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a home grown extremist group whose leadership has foreign ties, according to American intelligence.”
Leave it to the Times.
They just can’t print a hard news story about what happened yesterday on the ground inside Iraq without re-propagating the Bush White House myth that a significant portion of the grassroots popular resistance to the American military occupation (ie., “the insurgency”) is being stirred up by non-Iraqis - who in turn are linked on a grand organizational flow chart to Osama bin Laden and his fearsome jihadis, who spilled the blood of thousands of innocents in broad daylight back on 9/11 and changed the world forever.
Source, please? “The military said….. according to American intelligence.”
How’s that for speaking on deep background?
For those in a mood for nostalgia, let’s briefly revisit the Times major news story of October 3, 2002, when the fat was really in the fire in Washington six years ago.
After describing the infamous Rose Garden photo op when Dick Gebhardt, Joe Lieberman, and John McCain stood grinning in a great bipartisan circle jerk in support of the upcoming Congressional vote on the Iraq Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution, Elisabeth Bumiller and Alison Mitchell’s NYT account included the following:
“In announcing the agreement [on the AUMF resolution], Mr. Bush used some of his most graphic language in describing the threat of Mr. Hussein. ‘On his orders, opponents have been decapitated and their heads displayed outside their homes,’ Mr. Bush said. ‘Women have been systematically raped as a method of intimidation. Political prisoners are made to watch their own children being tortured. The dictator is a student of Stalin, using murder as a tool of terror and control…..”
The October 2nd, 2002 Times article concluded this way:
“Another Defense Department official said today that a top Qaeda operative was in Baghdad about two months ago, causing United States officials to suspect that his presence was known to Mr. Hussein. Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian, is believed to have left Iraq, the official said. United States counterterrorism officials have called Mr. Zarqawi, also known as Ahmad Fadeel al-Khalaylah, one of Al Qaeda’s top two dozen leaders. His activities and contacts in Iraq are not known, but his presence in Baghdad apparently was a factor in the Bush administration’s recent volley of accusations with the Iraqi government. As the United States threatens war against Iraq, the administration has sought to play up reports of those contacts to further vilify Mr. Hussein.”
And so today, as the United States threatens war against Iran, the administration has sought to play up reports of….. contacts between the insurgency and Tehran. Thanks again for rigorous standards of journalism in the nation’s daily paper of record.
How many more demons must we conjure up, and how many more dead boogeymen must we celebrate, before Congress finally steps up to its responsibilities, repudiates the lies and jingoism of the recent past, and simply repeals the 2002 Iraq War AUMF, as a first step towards bringing the troops home?
Bill from Saginaw