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'Whole Family' Dies in Clash with US
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'Whole Family' Dies in Clash with US
Death toll cut from 27 to 7;
Mostly civilians killed in clash
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by William Booth
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BALAD, Iraq—An attack on Iraqis here by U.S. troops after an American tank patrol was ambushed Friday morning killed seven people, not 27 as initially reported, U.S. military officials said yesterday.
Iraqi witnesses said five of the victims were not involved in the ambush.
Family members show the spot at al-Khazraj village near Balad, Iraq, Saturday June 14, 2003, where Ali Jassam and three of his sons, Hamza Ali, Abid Ali and Amer Ali, were killed by US troops early Friday morning. The family said that the four were shot and killed by US troops mistakenly as Fedayeen, while they were trying to save their livestock from fire that started after Fedayeen members attacked a US convoy near their village. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das)
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Lt. Col. Andy Fowler, commander of the 7th Cavalry unit that was ambushed with rocket-propelled grenades and a remote-controlled land mine, said a statement issued Friday by U.S. Central Command saying that 27 Iraqis had been killed was based on his "initial estimates."
Fowler adjusted the number to "seven confirmed dead."
Two of those killed, Fowler said, were dressed in the black pants and shirts typical of the fedayeen, a militia fiercely loyal to Saddam Hussein. Witnesses said those two were likely among the assailants who attacked the tank patrol.
The other five victims, according to witnesses and relatives, were an elderly shepherd, his three sons and one son-in-law. A fourth son was wounded. Family members who gathered here today for a funeral for the five said that a U.S. officer apologized for the killings, which occurred in the agricultural lands eight kilometers south of Balad.
Meanwhile, U.S. Army units moved against suspected militia leaders in the Iraqi town of Falluja, west of Baghdad early today.
The raids across Falluja by more than 1,300 U.S. soldiers began at about 3 a.m., just three hours after a deadline for Iraqis to turn in heavy weapons under an amnesty program.
In another development yesterday, coalition forces in Baghdad said they had captured former Iraqi air force commander Hamid Raja Shalah al-Tikriti, who was Number 17 on the U.S. Central Command's most-wanted list. A brief U.S. military statement gave no other details.
The former commander, who is in his late 50s, is from Saddam's hometown of Tikrit and was close to the ousted Iraqi president's family. He was one of the Iraqi military commanders seen meeting regularly with Saddam before the U.S.-led war started March 20.
The pilot and three-star general was appointed commander-in-chief of the Iraqi air force during the mid-1990s. He also commanded air bases during the 1980-'88 Iran-Iraq war, including in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
As U.S. commanders pour troops into areas north and west of Baghdad to search for weapons caches and the former Iraqi government forces blamed for recent ambushes, the killing of civilians could intensify an already tense situation.
Anger over such deaths could be used against the Americans, said the mayor of Balad, Nabel Mohammad Darwesh.
After such incidents, "the people can be manipulated," he said.
The relatives of the dead farmers said they assume the real attackers chose their small village as an ambush point not only to kill U.S. troops but to produce civilian casualties that would stir anti-occupation sentiment.
"We understand this is a mistake — that in war, these things happen," Saad Hashim Atia, a cousin of the dead men, said as he gathered with 100 men in three sweltering tents outside their home for an Islamic wake. In a fourth tent, women could be heard wailing and crying as helpers prepared a feast.
"But this is a whole family," Atia said. "Gone. All gone.''
He said that his Shiite tribe and village hated Saddam and suffered under his rule, and that they support the Americans and want them to stay.
But he also sought promises that the farmers' deaths would be investigated by an independent human rights group and that a formal apology would be delivered and some kind of restitution paid to the families by U.S. occupation forces.
The recent attacks on U.S. troops and the subsequent sweeps by occupation forces have been carried out in a part of Iraq populated mostly by Sunni Muslims, who were favored by Saddam.
Copyright 1996-2003. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited
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