In Iraq, the killing of 18 teenagers is a horrible routine

Robert Fisk

Published: 28 February 2007

This is a story with a caution. Eighteen teenagers were killed on Monday at a football field east of Baghdad. On Sunday, equally young students of Mustansiriya University - the oldest in Baghdad - were blown up by a suicide bomber. It has become a routine, at one and the same time more horrible and more normal each day. Only two years ago, a suicide bomber drove into an American convoy in Baghdad, killing 27 civilians, half of them children taking sweets from American soldiers. What price innocence?

Well, as usual, nothing is as it seems in Iraq. Within hours of the mass deaths in Ramadi yesterday came a disturbing statement by the US military. They knew of no deaths in Ramadi, although - and here was the sinister part of the whole thing - it was true, the Americans said, that 30 people had been "slightly wounded" in Ramadi when US troops set off a "controlled explosion" near a football field. "I can't imagine there would be another attack involving children without our people knowing," an American officer announced. Quite so.

Then he apparently half-acknowledged that there was another explosion near the soccer field, a "barbaric crime" by al-Qa'ida. The police said it was a car bomb. The American-funded Iraqi television service said it was a roadside bomb. A local tribal leader said that of the 18 dead, six were women - not, presumably, football players.

In Iraq, as we all know now, they go for the jugular. The old, the young, pregnant women, infants, soldiers, gunmen, murderers. They all die violently, the innocent along with the guilty. One of the insurgents' principal financial supporters - we had met in Amman, of course, not in Baghad - put it very succinctly to me. "A decision was made that we have to accept civilian casualties. If we attack the Americans, the innocent will die. We know that. What do you people call it when you kill women and children? Collateral damage?"

But exactly what happened in Ramadi remained suspiciously unclear. The football stadium where the 18 youths were reported to have been killed was near a US base. But there are no American troops on the campus at Mustansiriya. There was talk yesterday that a local Sunni imam in Ramadi had denounced al-Qa'ida - which operates in loose co-operation with Sunni insurgent groups - and that this might have prompted a revenge attack by the organisation.

But such is the level of violence and anarchy in Iraq today that all such events are filtered through pro-American Iraqi security officials or through the US army or through insurgents' websites. Insurgents' victims are claimed to have been killed by the Americans, civilians killed by US troops are said to have been murdered by insurgents. Who knows if that did not happen in Ramadi? In fear of their lives, Western journalists can no longer investigate these atrocities. The Americans like it that way. So, one suspects, do the insurgents. Accurate information in Iraq is like water in the desert: precious, rare, often polluted.

Ramadi is a no-go area for every Westerner, including most US troops. So who set off the truck bomb near a mosque in the city which killed 52 people on Saturday? Or the ambulance outside a police station near Ramadi, which killed 14 people on Monday? Shia militiamen seeking further blood in their war on Sunni fighters? Sunni groups trying to implicate Shia? Al-Qa'ida? Or the other shadowy groups who have affiliations with the American-supported Iraqi government, with the ministries of interior or health or "defence"?

The reality is that Iraq's war now exists in a fog through which we can see only vague figures. They may be insurgents or they may be soldiers. Or they may, for all the Iraqis know, be units from the 120,000 - yes, 120,000 - Western mercenaries now believed to be operating in Iraq for any number of legal and quasi-legal organisations. These hired gunmen constitute a force almost equal to the entire US contingent in Iraq. Who do they work for? What are their rules? The answer to the first may be "everyone". The answer to the second question? None.

Besides these great mysteries, what did the lives of 18 teenagers matter to the world yesterday, let alone who killed them?

UPDATE on US controlled explosion; Ramadi bomb kills playing children ; Report of Deadly Iraq Bombing Questioned

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Confusion over Iraq soccer explosion - US carried out blast - 18 children dead
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UPDATE on US controlled explosion

Ramadi bomb kills playing children

AlJazeera.Net
UPDATED ON:
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2007
20:37 MECCA TIME, 17:37 GMT

A car bomb attack near a football field in the Iraqi city of Ramadi has killed 18 youngsters according to state television and defence officials.

Iraqi television station Iraqiya said on Tuesday that the blast had been caused by a car bomb.

Police said it was a roadside bomb and that the field was near a US military base.

Sheikh Hamid al-Hais, deputy head of a council of Sunni tribal chiefs opposed to al-Qaeda, said: "The bombers have no humanity. Eighteen boys were killed, the oldest one was 15. Dozens more were wounded."

The offices of Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, and Jalal Talabani, the president, both issued statements condemning the blast that they said killed 18 people.

Al-Maliki's office said the dead included 12 children, while Talabani's office said all 18 were children.

Controlled blast

Sheikh Hamid said the truck, loaded up with logs, was parked next to the pitch and detonated as the boys played.

A defence official confirmed that 18 children were killed and 20 wounded in the latest attack

However, the US military told reporters that it was unaware of the bomb attack and had earlier undertaken a controlled blast in the city.

Major Jeff Pool, a US military spokesman, said the blast by US soldiers near a football field in Ramadi had slightly wounded 30 people, including nine children.

Pool said it was carried out in the courtyard of a building where bags of explosives had been found and that the wounded had cuts and bruises.

Windows from a nearby building were blown out, causing the wounds. Pool said US forces helped evacuate those injured.

He said: "I can't imagine there would be another attack involving children without our people knowing."

The major said the controlled blast in Ramadi was "stronger than we had expected".

The US military often carries out controlled explosions in Iraq to destroy captured weapons or unexploded bombs.

Referring to the football attack, a police colonel in Ramadi, who declined to be identified, said a suicide bomber had detonated a truck bomb and put the time of the explosion at about 5pm.

Pool said the controlled US blast was at 5:34pm.

What is the likelihood that there were two different blasts that occurred in the same area at around the same time?

Very little.

But, more importantly - if it is the same blast - what is the likelihood that US explosives 'experts' did not know that there were children playing near the truck?

None.

Case closed. The US is screwed.

Things are going to get MUCH, MUCH worse from here on.

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"Money" has no value - people do.

qrswave | Tue, 2007-02-27 22:28

new

More discrepencies

Report of Deadly Iraq Bombing Questioned

Wednesday February 28, 2007 3:46 AM

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - State television reported Tuesday that 18 boys were killed when a car bomb exploded in a park in Ramadi, and Iraqi and international officials were quick to deplore the slaughter. But questions about key details of the report emerged just as quickly.

Iraqi police and state TV said the attack occurred Tuesday. Later, police said it happened Monday.

The confusion grew deeper following an announcement by U.S. forces that 30 civilians and one Iraqi soldier were injured by flying debris Tuesday when troops intentionally detonated 15 bags of explosives found in Ramadi. Some of the wounded were treated at a U.S. aid station, and others were flown to a military hospital for treatment, the statement said. None of the injuries was life-threatening, it added.

The news first broke after nightfall when it is too dangerous for local journalists to check the reports independently in Ramadi, a Sunni insurgent stronghold 70 miles west of Baghdad. Western reporters normally tour the area only as part of military patrols. Much of Ramadi is under effective insurgent control, and even the police have difficulty establishing the facts in bombings and assassinations.

Meanwhile, reports that the boys were killed touched off a flurry of condemnation.

UNICEF, the U.N.'s children's agency, issued a statement saying ``the loss of so many innocent children at play is unacceptable.''

``Iraq's recreational areas, as well as its schools, must be respected and protected as safe havens where children can play and learn without fear,'' said Roger Wright, the UNICEF representative for Iraq.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's office issued a statement denouncing the 18 deaths and calling on Iraqi security forces to ``chase and punish the criminals.''

Another statement from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office called the boys' deaths ``a brutal act'' that ``reveals the ugly face'' of terrorists. The prime minister's statement described the attack as coming Tuesday.

But an official in al-Maliki's office said they based the date on the Iraqi TV report. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make public comments.

A prominent Sunni cleric called the attack evidence of terrorists' ``deficit and weakness.''

``They (terrorists) have neither religion nor dignity,'' Sheik Hameed al-Hayes told state television.

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"Money" has no value - people do.

qrswave | Tue, 2007-02-27 22:32

Conflicting reports over blast in Iraqi city

By Dean Yates and Ibon Villelabeitia Tue Feb 27, 2:09 PM ET

Iraqi police and a community leader said a bomb blast near a soccer field in the city of Ramadi on Tuesday killed 18 people, mostly children, but the U.S. military said it was unaware of such an attack.

Amid conflicting reports over what happened in the volatile western city, the U.S. military said its soldiers had carried out a controlled explosion in Ramadi, also near a soccer field, that slightly wounded 30 people, including nine children.

"I can't imagine there would be another attack involving children without our people knowing," Major Jeff Pool, a spokesman for U.S. forces in western Anbar province, told Reuters. The wounded had cuts and bruises, he said.

The U.S. military often carries out controlled blasts in Iraq to destroy captured weapons or unexploded bombs.

Pool said the controlled blast in Ramadi was "stronger than we had expected." He said it was carried out in the courtyard of a building where bags of explosives had been found. Windows from a nearby building were blown out, causing the wounds.

U.S. forces went to the site and helped evacuate the wounded, said Pool.

Two Iraqi police sources said 18 people had been killed in the blast they described. One, a colonel in Ramadi who declined to be identified, said a suicide bomber detonated a truck bomb.

He put the time of the explosion at about 5 p.m. The controlled U.S. blast was at 5:34 p.m., Pool said.

Tribal leader Hamid Farhan al-Hays from Ramadi told Iraqiya state television 12 children and six women were killed.

Hays blamed the blast on Sunni al Qaeda, which is involved in an escalating power struggle with Sunni elders for control of Anbar, a vast desert province that is the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq. Ramadi is the capital of Anbar.

"The groups which did this barbaric crime are al Qaeda," he said.

A truck bomb near a Sunni mosque in Ramadi killed 52 people on Saturday, a day after the mosque's imam had made a speech criticizing al Qaeda, which is entrenched in the area.

On Monday, a suicide bomber blew up an ambulance at an Iraqi police station near Ramadi, killing 14 people including women and children.

INCREASING CONFLICT

The attacks signaled an increasing conflict in Anbar between al Qaeda and Sunni tribal leaders, officials have said.

Such attacks also underscore the violence gripping Iraq, as U.S. and Iraqi forces step up a new security crackdown in Baghdad. Washington is also sending extra troops to Anbar.

As part of efforts to stabilize Iraq, officials from regional states including Iran and Syria would join U.S. and British envoys at a meeting in Baghdad next month, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Tuesday.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iraq planned to convene a high-level meeting of its neighbors and the Group of Eight leading industrialized countries as early as in April.

That meeting, to be held at ministerial level, would follow lower-level discussions in Baghdad in March, Rice said in excerpts of congressional testimony that were released by the State Department.

The U.S. embassy in Baghdad said Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad would attend the planned mid-March talks. A British embassy spokeswoman said Britain would also take part but it was unclear at what level.

The March meeting would be a chance for Western and regional powers to try to bridge some of their differences over Iraq, Zebari said by telephone from Denmark where he is on a visit.

"Our hope is that this will be an ice-breaking attempt for maybe holding other meetings in the future. We want Iraq, instead of being a divisive issue, to be a unifying issue," said Zebari.

In December, a report by the bipartisan U.S. Iraq Study Group recommended Washington hold direct talks with Damascus and Tehran to persuade them to help stem violence in Iraq. President Bush reacted coolly.

Washington accuses Iran of fanning violence in Iraq and has recently presented what the U.S. military says is evidence Iranian-manufactured weapons are being smuggled into Iraq.

U.S. officials accuse Syria of allowing foreign fighters to cross its long, porous border with Iraq to join those fighting the U.S.-backed government.

Both countries deny the accusations.

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut)

Conflicting reports over blast in Iraqi city

By Dean Yates and Ibon Villelabeitia Tue Feb 27, 2:09 PM ET

Iraqi police and a community leader said a bomb blast near a soccer field in the city of Ramadi on Tuesday killed 18 people, mostly children, but the U.S. military said it was unaware of such an attack.

Amid conflicting reports over what happened in the volatile western city, the U.S. military said its soldiers had carried out a controlled explosion in Ramadi, also near a soccer field, that slightly wounded 30 people, including nine children.

"I can't imagine there would be another attack involving children without our people knowing," Major Jeff Pool, a spokesman for U.S. forces in western Anbar province, told Reuters. The wounded had cuts and bruises, he said.

The U.S. military often carries out controlled blasts in Iraq to destroy captured weapons or unexploded bombs.

Pool said the controlled blast in Ramadi was "stronger than we had expected." He said it was carried out in the courtyard of a building where bags of explosives had been found. Windows from a nearby building were blown out, causing the wounds.

U.S. forces went to the site and helped evacuate the wounded, said Pool.

Two Iraqi police sources said 18 people had been killed in the blast they described. One, a colonel in Ramadi who declined to be identified, said a suicide bomber detonated a truck bomb.

He put the time of the explosion at about 5 p.m. The controlled U.S. blast was at 5:34 p.m., Pool said.

Tribal leader Hamid Farhan al-Hays from Ramadi told Iraqiya state television 12 children and six women were killed.

Hays blamed the blast on Sunni al Qaeda, which is involved in an escalating power struggle with Sunni elders for control of Anbar, a vast desert province that is the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq. Ramadi is the capital of Anbar.

"The groups which did this barbaric crime are al Qaeda," he said.

A truck bomb near a Sunni mosque in Ramadi killed 52 people on Saturday, a day after the mosque's imam had made a speech criticizing al Qaeda, which is entrenched in the area.

On Monday, a suicide bomber blew up an ambulance at an Iraqi police station near Ramadi, killing 14 people including women and children.

INCREASING CONFLICT

The attacks signaled an increasing conflict in Anbar between al Qaeda and Sunni tribal leaders, officials have said.

Such attacks also underscore the violence gripping Iraq, as U.S. and Iraqi forces step up a new security crackdown in Baghdad. Washington is also sending extra troops to Anbar.

As part of efforts to stabilize Iraq, officials from regional states including Iran and Syria would join U.S. and British envoys at a meeting in Baghdad next month, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Tuesday.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iraq planned to convene a high-level meeting of its neighbors and the Group of Eight leading industrialized countries as early as in April.

That meeting, to be held at ministerial level, would follow lower-level discussions in Baghdad in March, Rice said in excerpts of congressional testimony that were released by the State Department.

The U.S. embassy in Baghdad said Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad would attend the planned mid-March talks. A British embassy spokeswoman said Britain would also take part but it was unclear at what level.

The March meeting would be a chance for Western and regional powers to try to bridge some of their differences over Iraq, Zebari said by telephone from Denmark where he is on a visit.

"Our hope is that this will be an ice-breaking attempt for maybe holding other meetings in the future. We want Iraq, instead of being a divisive issue, to be a unifying issue," said Zebari.

In December, a report by the bipartisan U.S. Iraq Study Group recommended Washington hold direct talks with Damascus and Tehran to persuade them to help stem violence in Iraq. President Bush reacted coolly.

Washington accuses Iran of fanning violence in Iraq and has recently presented what the U.S. military says is evidence Iranian-manufactured weapons are being smuggled into Iraq.

U.S. officials accuse Syria of allowing foreign fighters to cross its long, porous border with Iraq to join those fighting the U.S.-backed government.

Both countries deny the accusations.

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut)

Confusion over Iraq soccer explosion - US carried out blast - 18 children dead

Related
U.S. disputes Iraq report of deadly blast in Ramadi
Conflicting reports over blast in Iraqi city
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Last Updated: Tuesday, 27 February 2007, 22:12 GMT

Confusion over Iraq soccer blast

There are confusing reports about at least one explosion in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi.
Iraqi officials said 18 people, most of them children, had been killed in a blast near a football pitch.

Later a US spokesman told Reuters news agency that US forces had carried out a controlled explosion in Ramadi, also close to a football field.

The official said there were injuries, but no deaths. It was not clear if both reports referred to the same incident.

However, the chief American military spokesman in Iraq, Lt Colonel Christopher Garver, later said he thought there had been "two separate incidents" in Ramadi.

Iraqi Prime minister Nouri Maliki appeared to confirm the killings, calling them a "cowardly act" by "terrorist bands".

Iraqi police said most of the victims were aged 10 to 15 and had gathered to play football when a bomb went off.

Football attacks

Ramadi is the capital of Anbar province - the centre of Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgency.

On Saturday, a bomb near a Sunni mosque close to the city killed more than 50 people after the mosque's imam had made a speech criticising al-Qaeda, which correspondents say is entrenched in the area.


Violence continues to kills dozens of Iraqis every day

The BBC's Jane Peel in Baghdad says it would not be the first time children playing football have been caught up in the violence.

Last August at least 12 boys and young men died when a bomb exploded on a football pitch in the capital.

There has been a sharp rise in violence between Iraq's Sunni and Shia Muslim groups in the past year.

Iraqi and US forces have launched an operation aimed at stemming sectarian attacks in the Baghdad area.

The Ramadi attack was reported as other bombings killed at least 18 people across Iraq.

Also on Tuesday, four bombings in the Iraqi capital killed 12 people, including three US soldiers.

Two of the bombings took place in the Karrada commercial area.

Meanwhile, in the northern city of Mosul, a suicide bomber drove a lorry into a police station, killing six people and wounding 38 others.

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Related
A car bomb has killed 18 boys aged between 10 and 15 playing football in a park in the western city of Ramadi, according to an Iraqi defence official.

Breaking: Confusion over Iraq soccer blast - US says it set off blast

Details of a deadly bombing near a Ramadi soccer field remain unclear as the US says it carried out a non-lethal blast at a sports ground.

Developping...

Iraq: Locals Accuse U.S. of Massacre in Ramadi

November 25, 2006


U.S. military tank fire killed scores of civilians in Ramadi, capital of Al-Anbar province, late Monday night, according to witnesses and doctors. Anger and frustration were evident at the hospitals and during the funerals in the following days.

Iraqi doctors and witnesses at the scene of the attack said U.S. tanks killed 35 civilians when they shelled several homes in the Al-Dhubat area of the city.

Ramadi, located 110 km west of Baghdad, has been beset with sporadic but intense violence between occupation forces and insurgents for several months.

On Tuesday, hundreds of people carried the 35 coffins of the dead to a graveyard in a funeral procession which closely resembled an angry demonstration.

"We heard the bombing and we thought it was the usual fighting between resistance fighters and the Americans, but we soon realised it was bombing by large cannons," 60-year-old Haji Jassim explained to IPS at the burial. "We weren't allowed by the Americans to reach the destroyed houses to try to rescue those who were buried, so certainly many of them bled to death."

Jassim claimed that everyone killed was innocent, that they were not fighters. He said that when he and others attempted to reach the rubble of the destroyed homes, located near mosques whose minaret's loudspeakers had broadcast pleas for help, "There was a big American force that stopped us and told us the usual ugly phrases we hear from them every day."

Jassim, speaking with IPS while several other witnesses listened while nodding their heads, said that ambulances did not appear on the scene for hours because "we realised that the Americans did not allow them to move," and that as a result, "there were people buried under the rubble who were bleeding to death while there was still a chance to rescue them."

Jassim then burst into tears and walked away saying prayers to Allah to bless the souls of the dead.

A doctor at Ramadi's main hospital, Abdullah Salih, told reporters that 35 bodies had been brought in and he also believed that others had not been retrieved since access had been limited by ongoing U.S. military operations.

Another doctor, Kamal al-Ani, said that in addition to the dead, another 17 wounded had been brought into the hospital.

The scene at the hospital was tragic as doctors confirmed the reason of death for many as severe bleeding that had gone on for several hours. Most of the doctors were unwilling to discuss too many details for fear of U.S. military reprisals.

"You can notice the number of dead is at least twice as high as the number of wounded," one of the doctors, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. A local Iraqi policeman who identified himself as Khalif Obeidi told IPS that tanks had destroyed several houses in the area during the U.S. raid, killing more than 30 civilians.

"We know that those killed were innocent," said Obeidi, "although there have been attacks on the Americans from near that area in the past."

Residents of the city and relatives of the dead who were at the funeral were furious.

"There is no other way for the Sunnis than to fight," Ali Khudher, a 25-year-old carpenter who lost a relative in the attack told IPS. "It is a religious war and no one can deny that now."

Others who attended the mass funeral chanted anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Iranian and even slogans against the Islamic Party which is now part of the Iraqi government.

Tempers run high in Ramadi also because the city has often been the scene of large-scale U.S. military operations and their inherent forms of collective punishment.Last June, thousands of residents were forced from their homes due to military operations, according to Maurizio Mascia, programme manager for the Italian Consortium of Solidarity (ICS), a non-governmental group based in Amman, Jordan that provides relief to refugees in Iraq.

At that time, Mascia told IPS, "The Americans, instead of attacking the city all at once like they've done in their previous operations in cities like Fallujah and Al-Qa'im, are using helicopters and ground troops to attack one district at a time in Ramadi."

Mirroring a complaint heard often from residents of Ramadi, Mascia said, "The main dangers for the population are the MNF (multi-national force) at the checkpoints and the snipers: both usually shoot at any movement that they consider dangerous - causing many victims among civilians."

In a phone conversation with IPS, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad said he had no specific details of the incident and that "the U.S. military has been conducting ongoing patrols and security details in Al-Anbar for months now. Our efforts are always to attack the terrorists and protect the civilian population."

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