BAGHDAD,
August 11 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Panicked by the
relentless Iraqi resistance attacks that target them day in and day
out, trigger-happy U.S. troops shot dead pointblank an Iraqi father
and three of his four children, one of them only eight years old, a
leading British newspaper reported Sunday, August 10.
Now
only the pregnant mother, Anwar, her 13-year-old daughter are
alive to tell how the bullets tore through the windscreen and how they
screamed for the Americans to stop, but her plea fell on deaf ears,
the Independent revealed the straight-to-the-heart story.
"We
were calling out to them 'stop, stop, we are a family', but they kept
on shooting…We never did anything to the Americans and they just
killed us," Mrs. Adel spoke about the horrible incident,
which occurred Saturday, August 9, at 9.30 at night, long before the
start of the curfew at 11p.m.
The
respected daily further said that doctors said the father and his
children would have survived if they had received treatment quicker,
but they were left to bleed to death because the Americans refused to
allow anyone to take them to hospital.
"American
soldiers were shooting in every direction. They just turned on the car
and sprayed it with bullets. You can see the holes in the front
passenger window and in the rear window. You can see the blood of the
dead all over the grey, imitation velvet seat covers," the paper
gave on-the-scene details.
Heartbreaking
Moments
Anwar's
brother tells us about the worst moments in her life, when he saw his heavily pregnant sister racing against time to save her blood
and flesh.
"I
saw my sister running towards me with her daughter in her arms and
blood pouring from her," said Tha'er Jawad.
"She
was crying out to me 'Help, help, go and help Adel'." I put them
in my car and tried to drive to the car but the American soldiers
pointed their guns at me and the people shouted out to me 'Stop! Stop!
They will shoot!," he said, adding that Anwar had to leave in the
car her injured daughters, 16-year-old Iaa and 13-year-old Haded,
along with her husband, Adel, who was bleeding badly and groaning, to
save her 8-year-old Mervet.
Her
18-year-old son, Haider, was already dead. A bullet went between his
eyes.
"After
a while the U.S. troops released Iaa and let her come to us,"
Jawad said. "But when they finally let us go to the hospital,
Mervet died. The doctors checked her injuries and told us she would
have lived if we had brought her sooner."
He
continued: "At 10.45 we heard the Americans had taken Adel and
his other girl to another hospital. We went there at six the next
morning, when the curfew was lifted, and they told us they both died
in the hospital.
"The
doctors said they might have lived if they got there sooner: the main
cause of death was bleeding. The Americans left them to bleed in the
street for hours."
Eyewitnesses
said that it has been always the case that panicked U.S. troops open
fire randomly at Iraqi civilians, thinking that they were under
attack.
The
Independent gave a reminder of Sa'ad al-Azawi, an Iraqi
Youngman who was driving his car with two of his colleagues. As they
came across a U.S. checkpoint, they did not hear an order to stop as
their stereo was turned up too loud. The U.S. soldiers, thinking they
were under attack again, got panicked and opened fire.
Sa'ad
al-Azawi, an eyewitness, said that the Americans further dragged
Azawi's two colleagues out and beat them, still thinking they were
resistance members.
And
he tried to help the bleeding Youngman out of the charred car.
"The
Americans did not let me," he said. "A soldier came over and
told me 'Inside'. He pushed me, even though my eight-year-old daughter
was with me. They didn't let us get the young guy's body out of the
car until he looked like he had been cooked."
On
Saturday, U.S. President George W. Bush declared in a radio address:
"Life is returning to normal for the Iraqi people ... All
Americans can be proud of what our military and provisional
authorities have achieved in Iraq."
'Bring
Us Home'
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"Somewhere
down the line, we became an occupation force in eyes. We don't
feel like heroes any more."
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Meanwhile,
an unprecedented internet campaign waged on the frontline and in the
U.S. is exposing the real risks for troops in Iraq, noting that Iraq
has turned into a second Vietnam for the U.S. troops who want to go
home, The Observer reported Sunday.
"I
want them to bring our troops home. I am appalled at Bush's policies.
He has got us into a terrible mess," said Susan Schuman, whose
son, Justin, is serving in the Iraqi town of Samarra, where U.S.
troops are killed with grim regularity.
She
lives in Shelburne Falls, a small town in Massachusetts, and says all
her neighbors support her view.
"I
don't know anyone around here who disagrees with me," she said.
The
U.S. soldiers themselves, through e-mails and chat rooms, paint a
vivid picture of U.S. army life that is a world away from the
sanitized official version, slamming the U.S. handling of postwar
Iraq, the daily said.
"Somewhere
down the line, we became an occupation force in eyes. We don't feel
like heroes any more," Private Isaac Kindblade of the 671st
Engineer Company said in an e-mail seen by The
Observer.
"The
rules of engagement are crippling. We are outnumbered. We are
exhausted. We are in over our heads. The President says, "Bring
'em on." The generals say we don't need more troops. Well,
they're not over here," he wrote.
Former
colonel David Hackworth, who was the army's youngest colonel in the
Vietnam War and one of its most decorated officers, said he receives
almost 500 e-mails a day, many of them from soldiers serving in Iraq.
The
paper further said that some veterans have begun to form organizations
to campaign to bring the soldiers home and highlight their difficult
conditions.
Erik
Gustafson, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf war, has founded Veterans For
Common Sense.
"There
is an anger boiling under the surface now, and I, as a veteran, have a
duty to speak because I am no longer subject to military
discipline," the veteran said.
A
recent email from Iraq passed to Gustafson, signed by "the
Soldiers of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division," said
simply: "Our men and women deserve to see their loved ones again
and deserve to come home. Thank you for your attention."
Schuman
too is planning to join members of a new group, Military Families
Speak Out, who will travel to Washington to make their case for their
sons, daughters, husbands and wives, to be brought home from Iraq.
At
least 57 U.S. soldiers have been killed in resistance attacks, while
another 60 have now died in non-combat incidents since the White House
declared major combat operations in Iraq over on May 1,
according to an AFP account.
