U.S. and
UK Massacre and Maim thousands in Iraq
Just several days after George
Walker Bush declared victory following the bloody massacre mendaciously
entitled "Operation Iraqi Freedom," the Iraqi people resisted
U.S. gunfire with rocks and took to the streets in protest across their
country.
For the most part, North American
and European media have worked overtime to diminish and white-out the
reality of large numbers of Iraqi dead. However, there have been daily
reports showing the grisly destruction of human life over the course of
the U.S. massacre, which has followed the deadly assaults of more than
a decade of economic sanctions and bombings on the people of Iraq.
On April 14, the Pentagon declared
that it had no plans to determine how many Iraqi civilians may have been
killed or injured as a result of U.S. military operations in Iraq. International
relief and human rights organizations have attempted to assess the damage
done by U.S. and UK troops. However, a full assessment of the atrocities
and human rights violations committed by U.S. and UK forces will not be
possible until the Iraqi people have self-determination and true freedom.
Iraqi civilians have experienced
loss, not freedom, in the hands of U.S. and UK troops
According to medical records in Baghdad, 1,101 dead and 6,800 wounded
civilians passed through the 19 major hospitals in the city between March
19 and April 9, 2003. Three hospitals near the Baghdad airport —
Al Kharama, Al Askan and Yarmuk — recorded 845 deaths of this count.
Estimates of close to another thousand never made it to hospitals and
were buried in graves dug throughout the city in cemeteries, backyards,
city parks and mosque grounds, including 150 graves that were dug into
the garden around the Al Askan Hospital.
From media reports, an organization
called Iraq Body Count project (www.iraqbodycount.net) has tracked between
3760 and 4795 civilian deaths. The International Committee of the Red
Cross maintains that Baghdad hospitals, amidst water and power shortages,
are overwhelmed with wounded people.
Despite the U.S. insistence
that it only attacked "legitimate" military targets, the killing
of Iraqi people who were non-combatants was rampant. Calculations of the
number of the dead have not been made in many of Iraq's cities, but available
information indicates that hundreds of civilians died during the U.S.
assault.
In the city of Najaf, for example,
the Najaf Teaching Hospital reported that it had treated 286 civilian
dead during the war compared to 57 military deaths. As many as 62 people
were reported killed by a bomb that was dropped on a Baghdad market on
March 28 by U.S. planes. In just one publicized instance, we learned that
12 year old Ali Ismail Abbas, was orphaned, lost both arms and suffered
burns to 20 percent of his body during the bombing of Baghdad.
Two pregnant women were killed
when a U.S. tank shelled their ambulance on the way to Yarmuk Hospital
on April 7, doctors reported. The driver and the accompanying physician
were both injured. Soon afterward, shells hit the hospital's diabetes
center, destroying an entire floor which volunteer workers have been working
to repair since.
After a taxi-driver was alleged
to have detonated a bomb, killing himself and four U.S. troops at an army
checkpoint near Najaf, U.S. soldiers began firing on cars and indiscriminately
killing families trying to escape the fighting.
U.S. atrocities denounced
internationally
Amnesty International's April 8 statement condemned "the mounting
toll of civilian casualties in Iraq and the reported use of cluster bombs
by U.S. forces in heavily populated areas," and cited it as "a
breach of international humanitarian law."
Video footage taken at Al-Hilla's
hospital in Bagdad was judged by Reuters and Associated Press to be too
terrible to show on television. The footage showed bodies of the men,
women and children ripped apart with shards of shrapnel from cluster bombs.
Independent journalists reported that the pictures showed babies cut in
half and children with their limbs blown off. Two trucks full of bodies,
including women in flowered dresses, were seen outside the hospital.
Doctors from Medical Aid for
the Third World cited "a human catastrophe in Iraq." On April
16, they issued a statement reporting the following:
"We have seen hundreds
of civilians, including many children, injured and killed, often by prohibited
weapons such as cluster bombs. We have seen how ambulances and civilian
cars have been hit by U.S. troops.
"We have experienced how
patients and health workers had difficulties passing U.S. military checkpoints
and reaching medical facilities.
"We now see how the Iraqi
civilian hospitals and other medical facilities are plundered and neglected.
"Many Iraqi health professionals
can no longer report to work. Without electricity, safe water supply and
the provision of medicines and other medical supplies, many patients are
simply left to die."
This organization of doctors
accused the U.S. and British troops of "grossly and repeatedly violating
international humanitarian law – Articles 10, 12, 15, 21, 35, 36,
41, 45, 47, 48 and 51 of Protocol I addition to the Geneva Conventions."
They supported the initiative to "bring U.S. General Tommy Franks
and other U.S. and British military authorities and personnel before a
court of justice to make them answer for their violations of international
humanitarian law."
Iraqi loss extends way beyond
statistics
The extent of human suffering as a result of 43 days of relentless bombing
cannot be measured in numbers. Between March 19 and April 9, U.S. and
UK troops killed journalists, bombed medical clinics and markets and destroyed
homes, government buildings, and infrastructures necessary for daily life.
They maimed children, destroyed families, and stood by while the ancient
relics of the Iraqi National Museum were demolished and pillaged.
In the weeks following April 9 when the U.S. took control of Baghdad,
Iraqis were killed and injured at the rate of several dozen per day through
gunfire. In the days, weeks, months, and years to come the Iraqi people
will suffer the result of a demolished infrastructure, unclean water,
and the resulting endemic of diarrhea and diseases like typhoid. This
is the misery that comes as a result of U.S. terror and direct colonial
rule.
However, as the U.S. occupation
continues, so will the resistance of the Iraqi people to colonial domination.
In Mosul, U.S. troops stopped giving out candy to children who were increasingly
throwing rocks at them. In the same protest in Falujah that killed 15
protesters, a banner read, "Sooner or Later U.S. Soldiers, We'll
Kick You Out."
Charge the U.S. and the UK
with War Crimes!
Self-Determination and Reparations to the Iraqi People!
Uhuru!
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