American forces have no answer to images of slain innocents

1.00pm - By JUSTIN HUGGLER in Baghdad


A tiny bundle of blanket is unwrapped and inside lies the body of a dead baby, its limbs smeared with dried blood. The mourners peel back the blanket further. Behind lies a second dead baby, wrapped tightly in the same bundle.

Another blanket is opened and inside are the bodies of a mother and child. The child, perhaps six or seven years old, is lying close up against his or her mother, as if seeking comfort. But the mother's clothes are stained with blood, and the child has no head.

These are the images American forces in Iraq had no answer to yesterday.

They come from video footage of the burials of 41 men, women and children Iraqis say died when American planes launched air strikes on a wedding party near the Syrian border on Wednesday.

US forces insist the air strike was on a safe house used by foreign fighters entering Iraq from Syria. They do not dispute they killed around 40, but claim American forces were returning fire and the dead were all foreign fighters.

But to the video footage that shows dead women and children they have no answer, no explanation. So potentially damaging is the video to the US occupation that American officials have demanded that the Dubai-based al-Arabiya television news network, which obtained the footage, give them the name of the cameraman who shot the pictures. Al-Arabiya has refused.

In the footage, grown men weep like children and cling to the bodies of their loved ones before they are buried as if they cannot stand to let them go. There are dozens of bundles wrapped in flower-patterned blankets, pitiful makeshift shrouds. Some of these images were shown on Western television news yesterday, but not the most disturbing: the bodies themselves.

"These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let's not be naïve," Major-General James Mattis, commander of the US first marine division, insisted yesterday.

But he had no explanation of where the dead women and children in the video came from.

"I have not seen the pictures but bad things happen in wars," he said cryptically.

"I don't have to apologise for the conduct of my men."

US forces say that they have been watching the border area where the attack took place for some time, and that they saw a large group of suspicious people moving in the area and sent in ground forces, who came under fire. The US forces returned fire, killing large numbers.

US forces are sticking doggedly to this version of events in spite of rising evidence that a wedding party was hit. More and more eye witnesses are coming forward.

Hussein Ali, a well-known Iraqi wedding singer, was buried in Baghdad yesterday, along his brother Mohammed. Their family said they had been performing at the wedding when it was hit.

The evidence US forces have put forward to back up their version of events has been demolished.

Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, the US military spokesman, said American soldiers had recovered guns, Syrian passports and a satellite phone at the scene of the air strikes.

But Shiekh Nasrallah Miklif, the head of the Bani Fahd tribe to which most of the dead belonged, explained yesterday that was only natural, given where the air strike happened.

The wedding party took place in Makradheeb, a tiny village in the desert about 25km from the Syrian border. Every household in Iraq has a gun, usually a Kalashnikov assault rifle, to protect themselves from the lawlessness that has flourished under the US occupation. But out in the desert, it is even more natural for the people to keep guns -- to protect themselves not only from robbers, but also from wild animals. The villagers all worked as shepherds, and they needed to protect their flocks as well.

The village is 120km from the nearest town, al-Qa'im, and 15km from the nearest road. There are no telephone lines and no mobile coverage. Communications with the outside world are poor and satellite phones are comparatively cheap in Iraq. It is only natural that the villagers would have a satellite phone.

The families here have lived straddled across the Iraq-Syria border for generations, and frequently marry neighbours from across the border. That means there have always been villagers on the Iraqi side with Syrian passports and vice versa.

On top of that, many of the villagers on both sides make their living smuggling sheep across the border, and have been routinely crossing it for years -- not entirely legal, but hardly foreign fighters crossing into Iraq to attack American forces.

"How many people go to the middle of the desert 10 miles from the Syrian border to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilisation?" General Mattis of the US marines said yesterday.

But the truth, according to Iraqis, is that the dead were holding the wedding in the village their had lived in all their lives.

Sheikh Mikfil was not in the village at the time of the attack, although he has visited it before. But as tribal leader, he has spoken extensively with the survivors. All the villagers were members of his tribe; the only dead from outside the tribe were the musicians. He put the death toll at 41 - 25 of them from the birdegroom's family.

The wedding was held at the home of the bridegroom's father Rikat Obeid Hussein, the father of the bridegroom. The newly married couple survived because they were not in the house, but in a specially erected honeymoon tent when the bombings started.

According to the sheikh, by 2am when the attack started, the celebrations were finished and the guests were asleep. There had been US helicopters in the sky earlier, but they had not fired and the wedding guests were not worried.

General Kimmitt said yesterday: "We sent a ground force in to the location. They were shot at. We returned fire."

But Sheikh Mikfil claims the attack began with air strikes, without warning.

At 2am American planes suddenly started bombing the area. They were followed by helicopters, and after several hours of air strikes, US troops arrived in armoured vehicles and searched the devastated village.

Contrary to earlier reports, the sheikh said there was no celebratory gunfire. Firing guns in the air is traditional at Iraqi weddings, and it was suspected US forces had mistaken such shooting for hostile fire, as they did at a wedding party in Afghanistan where US air strikes killed more than 50 people in 2002.

But Sheikh Mikfil says he questioned the survivors extensively on this, and they were categorical: there was no shooting in the air.

He said the bride came from the same village, so there was no large-scale movement of people that could have aroused US suspicions.

"If they killed foreign fighters, why don't they show us the bodies?" he asked.

"If they suspected foreign fighters were there, why didn't they come to arrest them, instead of using this huge force?"

The sheikh says he suspects the Americans may have been acting on false intelligence information, given by some one who wants to increase the tension between Iraqis and Americans to destabilise the US occupation.

It is impossible to reconcile the American and Iraqi versions of events.

But with more and more evidence emerging that casts doubt on the American version, and Iraqi anger rising, US forces need to come up with some answers.

If one of the "bad things" that "happen in wars" according to General Mattis, took place, they need to explain what it was.

- INDEPENDENT

Herald Feature: Iraq