US helicopters fire into population on bloody Sunday

1.00pm - By PATRICK COCKBURN in Baghdad


"I am a journalist. I'm dying, I'm dying," screamed Mazen al-Tumeizi, correspondent of the Arabic television channel al-Arabiya, as shrapnel from a rocket fired by a US helicopter slammed into his back.

Twelve other people died and 61 were wounded in Haifa Street in central Baghdad by rockets fired by two American helicopters into a crowd milling around near a burning US Bradley fighting vehicle hit by a rocket or a bomb some hours before.

The day became one of Iraq's bloodiest days for weeks in which at least 110 people died in clashes around the country.

The Health Ministry said the worst casualties were in Baghdad, where 37 were killed, and in Tal Afar near the Syrian border where 51 people died.

US troops mounted a major offensive on Thursday in Tal Afar, a suspected haven for foreign fighters about 60 miles from Syria, but the military gave no immediate explanation for the steep rise in the death toll on Sunday.


"The helicopter fired on the Bradley to destroy it after it had been hit earlier and it was on fire," said Maj Phil Smith of the 1st Cavalry Division.

"It was for the safety of the people around it."

Mr al-Tumeizi, a Palestinian, was the sixth Arab journalist to be killed by American troops since the capture of Baghdad last year.

The video-tape of his last moments shows the Bradley blazing in the distance and a crowd of young men celebrating its destruction but no reason why the helicopters should open fire.

Many of those hit by the rockets in Haifa Street, a tough neighbourhood of tower blocks notorious as a centre of resistance to the occupation, were on their way to work.

"We are just ordinary workers. We are just trying to live," sobbed Haidar Yahyiah, 23, because of the pain from his broken leg as he lay in bed in the nearby Karkh hospital.

He and others described how they had been woken up by the sound of explosions in Haifa Street in the early dawn. They had been sleeping on the roofs because it is too hot in the Baghdad summer to sleep inside.

They saw a vehicle on fire. But it was several hours later, at about 8 am, that they sallied out. By then US troops had long before removed four lightly wounded soldiers from the Bradley.

As invariably happens in Iraq young men and children had swarmed over the vehicle cheering triumphantly, waving black flags and setting it ablaze again.

The US military claimed a Kiowa, a light reconnaissance and attack helicopter, fired rockets at the Bradley to destroy weapons and ammunition on board. But it is evident from the al-Arabiya video that the rockets landed among people standing or walking far away from the Bradley.

Hamid Ali Khadum was on his way to work driving a minibus when he was hit.

"At first I thought I had just tripped over dead people but then I realised I was wounded myself," he said as he lay in bed in the Karkh hospital waiting for an operation on his heavily bandaged left leg. The rest of his body was peppered with shrapnel.

A male nurse standing near his bed said: "This happens not just in Haifa Street but in all Baghdad, and not just in Baghdad but in all Iraq."

The slaughter in Haifa Street took place only a few hundred yards from the heavily-defended Green Zone (now officially renamed the International Zone) which is the headquarters of the Iraqi government and its American ally.

It is a measure of the military failure of the US occupation that it has failed to get control of this Sunni Muslim neighbourhood in the heart of the capital.

Early yesterday insurgents fired over a dozen rockets and mortars into the Green Zone sending black smoke billowing into the sky. The zone contains the US embassy and the vast bulk of Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace which the US is to refurbish for the use of its officials at a cost of US$200 million.

US troops set up road blocks backed by armour around the city causing enormous traffic jams in an unavailing attempt to catch whoever was mortaring them. There was scattered violence elsewhere in Baghdad in which a further 12 people died and 41 were injured.

Col Alaa Bashir, the police chief of the Yarmouk district in west Baghdad, was killed by a bomb while he was on patrol. A suicide bomber blew himself up in a vehicle packed with explosives at the gates to Abu Ghraib prison though he was the only one to die. A US plane attacked a machine gun team from the Mehdi Army in their stronghold in Sadr City in East Baghdad.

In the Ramadi, a city on the Euphrates controlled by insurgents west of Baghdad, ten people were killed and 40 wounded in fighting according to the local hospital. A US Humvee was set ablaze, its parts strewn across the street but casualties were unknown.

South of Baghdad three Polish soldiers were killed in an attack, a further sign that violence has now spread to all parts of Iraq while up to six months ago it was largely confined to the so-called Sunni triangle or the Sunni Muslim provinces around Baghdad.

The war has also escalated because the US and its Iraqi allies are now fighting gunmen from the Shiah community as well as Sunni guerrillas.

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Herald Feature: Iraq