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Pictures of some of the Iraqi victims
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CAIRO,
May 21 (IslamOnline.net) – The horrible accounts by Iraqis who
survived a near-death experience at a sleeping village by the
Iraqi-Syrian borders – accounts backed by video images of
decapitated children and women – made the headlines in major British
papers Friday, May 21.
"A
tiny bundle of blankets is unwrapped; inside is the body of a baby,
its limbs smeared with dried blood. Then the mourners peel back the
blanket further to reveal a second dead baby," the lead story by
the Independent started. It was run under the a headline: " One
incident. Forty dead. Two stories. What really happened?"
The
tragic incident occurred Wednesday, May 19, when U.S. helicopters
killed more than 40 people, including several children, during a
wedding party in western Iraq.
According
to Iraqi police sources and eyewitnesses, a helicopter fired at the
party in Makr al-Deeb, a remote village close to the town of al-Qaim
near the Syrian borders, killing between 42 and 45 people.
"U.S.
forces insist that the attack was on a safe house used by foreign
fighters entering Iraq from Syria. They do not dispute that they
killed about 40 people, but claim American forces were returning fire
and the dead were all foreign fighters," according to the
Independent.
"For
the video footage that shows dead women and children they have no
explanation."
Click
here to read the full story by the Independent…
Another
British paper based on its coverage of the story on first-hand
reporting through the testimony of Haleema Shihab, 30, sister-in-law
of the groom, whom the paper quoted as telling the story from her
hospital bed in the emergency ward at Ramadi general hospital, 60
miles west of Baghdad.
"The
bombing started at 3am. We went out of the house and the American
soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and
targeting us one by one," the Guardian quoted Mrs. Shihab as
saying.
According
to the paper, Mrs. Shibab's description, backed by other witnesses, of
an attack on a sleeping village is at odds with the American claim
that they came under fire while targeting a suspected foreign fighter
safe house.
Click
here to read the Guardian's article…
Probe
Into Incident
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Taken to hospital after the wedding-turned-funeral
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American
papers, on the other hand, reported the ensuing controversy over the
raid among other incidents of military confrontation in Iraq, but
apparently giving prominent coverage to the U.S. military's account of
what might have happened.
According
to the Washington Post, U.S. military officers said Thursday that they
would open an investigation into a ground and air assault in western
Iraq that led to "sharply conflicting accounts of whether the
approximately 40 people killed were mostly foreign insurgents or
civilians celebrating a wedding".
The
New York Times, for its part, focused its coverage on the occupation
authority's sticking by their side of the story.
"In
Baghdad, American commanders strongly defended a missile strike near
the Syrian border this week that reportedly killed 41 people, saying
they believed they had hit a hideaway for foreign fighters and not a
wedding party as claimed by Iraqis there".
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