Tougher U.S. approach may hike death toll
Spate of Iraqi deaths creates backlash against coalition
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| Peter Goodspeed |
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| National Post, with files from news services |
KUWAIT CITY - Faced with suicide bombers posing as motorists and Iraqi soldiers dressed as ordinary citizens, the U.S. has imposed tough new measures which could see a sharp increase in the civilian casualty rate in this war.
Despite the U.S.-led coalition's attempts to limit civilian casualties, the mounting death toll in Iraq is stoking Arab anger across the Middle East and Europe and damaging coalition attempts to win the "hearts and minds" of ordinary Iraqis.
At least nine civilians have been killed at three checkpoints in southern and central Iraq since Monday by U.S. soldiers who fear suicide bombers.
Iraqi officials said yesterday that 15 members of a single Iraqi family were killed when their pickup truck was blown apart by a rocket from an Apache helicopter near Hilla, a farming community 80 kilometres south of Baghdad.
The Iraqi government claims nearly 600 civilians have been killed, and thousands injured, since the war began, though that figure is impossible to verify.
In Brussels, the European Commission yesterday called the checkpoint killings "a horrible and tragic incident... It is not an isolated incident. Too many civilians have already lost their lives in this war."
U.S. troops have been on edge since a suicide car-bomb attack at a checkpoint south of Karbala on Saturday killed four soldiers. Officials have ordered tighter restrictions at checkpoints, saying vehicles will no longer be permitted to cross through military convoys.
Any vehicle blocking traffic will be rolled over.
Soldiers have also been told that if civilians with hands in their pockets approach troops and fail to respond, first to a shouted command and then to a warning shot, they will be killed.
U.S. officials defended the tough new measures as necessary, saying they are being targeted by Iraqi militiamen disguised as civilians who stage suicide attacks or pretend to surrender and then open fire.
At a daily briefing in Qatar, Brigadier-General Vince Brooks defended the soldiers' action: "In all cases, in checkpoints and otherwise, we maintain the right to self-defence.
"We've increased vigilance because of the tactics of Iraqi death squads," he added. "While we regret the loss of civilian lives, they remain unavoidable."
The latest incident at Hilla, believed by the U.S.-led coalition to be home to a camp for Saddam Fedayeen, involved a family fleeing fighting between Iraqi forces and the coalition in Nasiriya.
A U.S. helicopter fired on their truck around 6 p.m., Iraqi officials said.
The officials took reporters to the city, where Razek al-Kazem al-Khafaj, the only survivor of the attack, told reporters the dead included his wife, his six children, his father, mother and three brothers and their wives.
Weeping over 15 rough-hewn coffins, he moaned: "Which one of them should I cry on?" and threw sand in his eyes as a sign of mourning.
Murtada Abbas, a hospital director in Hilla, near where the Khafaj family died, said 33 civilians, including children, were killed and 310 wounded in bombing yesterday around the Nader residential area on the southern outskirts of the farming town.
U.S. Marines, who are marching on Baghdad, took a key canal bridge in the Hilla area and captured some 50 Iraqi prisoners in the fighting.
The U.S. Central Command in Qatar said it had no initial evidence of the Apache attack.
"Preliminary investigation by U.S. Central Command has not turned up any evidence of this alleged incident. However, command officials are continuing to look into the allegation," it said in a statement.
U.S. military officials have also begun an investigation into the killing of at least seven women and children near Najaf, in central Iraq, when a four-wheel-drive van carrying as many as 15 people allegedly failed to stop at a checkpoint.
Nearby, yet another man died, while his wife watched, as soldiers fired on their car at another checkpoint.
And in another checkpoint shooting yesterday, U.S. Marines killed an unarmed Iraqi south of Baghdad. Soldiers said they fired on a pick-up truck that sped toward them outside the southern town of Shatra, killing the driver and injuring his passenger.
In the Najaf case, in which the women and children died, officials at Central Command said soldiers had "exercised considerable restraint" when the driver failed to stop at the checkpoint.
The soldiers had called on the driver to halt and then fired warning shots.
"As a last resort, the soldier fired into the passenger compartment of the vehicle," officials said.
Jim Wilkinson, spokesman for U.S. Commander General Tommy Franks, described the deaths as a "tragedy." But he said the incidents were indicative of a bigger problem -- "the tactics of terrorism being employed by the regime death squads."
A Washington Post reporter, who was at the scene of the Najaf shooting, said 10 Iraqis were killed in the incident, including five children.
Moments after the shooting, a U.S. Army captain accused his troops of not having fired warning shots quickly enough, the newspaper said.
The newspaper said a crowded Toyota van approached a road block guarded by two Bradley armoured fighting vehicles around 4:30 p.m. on Monday. A captain commanding the platoon ordered his men to fire a warning shot when the vehicle ignored a hand signal to stay back.
As the vehicle kept coming the captain told the platoon to shoot a machine gun round into the van's radiator.
"'Stop [messing] around!' Captain Ronny Johnson yelled into the company radio network when he still saw no action being taken," the newspaper reported.
"Finally, he shouted at the top of his voice, 'Stop him, Red 1, stop him!'
"That order was immediately followed by the loud reports of 25 mm cannon fire from one or more of the platoon's Bradleys. About half a dozen shots were heard in all.
"'Cease fire!' Johnson yelled over the radio. Then, as he peered into his binoculars from the intersection on Highway 9, he roared at the platoon leader, 'You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!' "
Military authorities have confirmed at least 70 war-related deaths among U.S. and British troops since fighting began on March 19. The U.S. Defence Department has released the names of 44 U.S. servicemen who have died; 17 others are listed as missing and seven are prisoners of war.
Britain's Ministry of Defence has confirmed 27 dead.
In other incidents yesterday, U.S. officials said, an Iraqi prisoner was shot to death after he reached for a Marine's rifle while being questioned.
In Kuwait, U.S. soldiers shot and wounded the driver of a car that burst past a checkpoint into a base near the Iraqi border after midnight. Kuwaiti officials said the man was a Kuwaiti army captain hurrying to work.
© Copyright 2003 National Post
