Iraqis dispute claim of 54 killed

Tuesday, December 2, 2003

San Francisco Chronicle

Vivienne Walt, Chronicle Foreign Service

Iraqis dispute claim of 54 killed

Townspeople say only 9 died, mostly noncombatants

Samarra, Iraq -- U.S. commanders said Monday they had killed up to 54
insurgents in the fiercest battle since Saddam Hussein's government fell
nearly eight months ago, but townspeople disputed that claim, saying only
about nine Iraqis were killed in the battle Sunday, most of them
noncombatants.

Military officials said the simultaneous attacks against two convoys of
Bradley fighting vehicles in this city about 70 miles north of Baghdad were
a highly synchronized operation involving heavy munitions and requiring
precise knowledge of the American convoys' schedules.

"This was a coordinated effort,'' said Col. Frederick Rudesheim, commander
of the 4th Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade, whose tanks drove into two
ambushes as they escorted trucks carrying large amounts of the new Iraqi
currency to branches of the Radifan Bank on opposite ends of town. He said
30 to 40 insurgents attacked each convoy. "There was a concerted effort by
the enemy to deal a significant blow to coalition forces," Rudesheim added.

But with Samarra's hospital still filled with casualties, residents told a
starkly different story. In a mix of rage and grief, residents lashed out at
the brigade's soldiers for firing randomly into crowded market areas in the
center of the city, killing civilians, including two Iranians believed to be
pilgrims visiting a Shiite mosque in town.

"All the people in town today are asking for revenge," said Majid Fadel
al-Samarai, 50, an emergency-room worker at the Samarra General Hospital who
said he counted nine dead people at the hospital on Sunday. "They want to
kill the Americans like they killed our civilians. Give me a gun, and I will
also fight."

Rudesheim told reporters Americans shot only at those who had fired on
soldiers. He said the military had calculated deaths "as best as we could,"
using reports from field commanders immediately after the firefights. Each
death was cross-checked with a second soldier, said Capt. Andrew Deponai of
the 3rd Brigade's Combat Team.

Residents said American soldiers showed little regard for the safety of
civilians during the gunbattle.

"I saw a man running across the street to get his small son, who was stuck
in the middle," said Abdul Satar, 47, who owns a bakery a block from one of
the two banks to which the convoys had driven. "So the Americans shot the
man," he said.

In a house on the outskirts of Samarra, Abir Mohammed Al-Khayat, 28, said a
rocket hit the minibus in which she and several others had commuted from
their jobs at a local pharmaceuticals factory. "There were about 20 of us,
men and women," she said, cradling her arm, injured by shrapnel, in a sling.

At the hospital, several patients said they were injured when a shell,
apparently fired from an attack helicopter, struck a mosque at about 5 p.m.,
when residents were converging for evening prayers.

In the corner bed of one ward lay Ali al-Tashi, a 9-year-old boy who had
gone to the mosque Sunday night to pray with his father. Heavily bandaged,
the boy sobbed in pain and confusion. His older brother, Grimian, 17,
clutched his hand and tried to comfort him.

"He still does not know that our father has been killed," Grimian said. "All
our brothers and sisters and our mother have gone up north, to Irbil, to
bury him."

In the hospital's morgue, two people killed by bullets lay on metal shelves:
a rail-thin man who seemed to be in his 60s, and a middle-aged woman dressed
in a black religious robe. Hospital staffers said they found Iranian
passports on the two bodies. Many Iranian pilgrims visit the shrine of
Mahdi, an imam revered by Shiite Muslims, in the city.

But Samarra is now dominated by Sunni Muslims and is a longtime stronghold
of Hussein supporters.

U.S. military officers said Sunday that all those killed were members of
Fedayeen Saddam, the most ruthless fighting force Hussein possessed before
the war. By Monday, however, they said that was no longer clear.

"We have not established a definitive link between these enemy and a
specific organization," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters in Baghdad.
He said some were wearing black uniforms, suggesting Fedayeen membership.

Still, anti-American feeling runs strong in Samarra. Near the site of
Sunday's battle, Salem al-Rathmani, sported an olive-green Iraqi army
uniform and officer's winter jacket - garb not seen since the U.S. victory
in April -- and denounced the U.S. presence in terms that evoked prewar
rhetoric.

"Why are people attacking the Americans? Because of the Palestinian issue,
the Americans' policy of supporting Israel, the sanctions," he said,
referring to the U.N. economic sanctions imposed after the first gulf war.

The crowd around al-Rathmani, who said he was a businessman in "construction
and tourism,'' listened quietly until he mentioned dragnets conducted by
U.S. soldiers in Samarra. The Americans took 80 prisoners last week, members
of the crowd shouted, and even captured local leaders of the Islamic Labor
Party, which is represented on the Iraqi Governing Council. "Why are they
capturing a lot of people without real charges?" they demanded.

On Monday, American forces leveled trees on the median of the highway in an
attempt to clear hiding places from which insurgents could attack convoys.
Rudesheim said two previous currency deliveries had been attacked, so the
soldiers were prepared for the ambush. He gave no further information on the
earlier attacks.

Soldiers from the ambushed convoys said the fighters lay in wait as the
tanks entered the city and moved through the narrow streets toward the
banks. With checkered headscarves covering their faces, they waited on
rooftops and in alleyways, armed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and
Kalashnikov rifles. As the convoys reached their destinations at the same
moment, two separate battles erupted.

"There were people on the roofs, sneaking around corners with RPGs
(rocket-propelled grenades), mortars, firing in all directions," said Sgt.
1st Class Alvin Ware, 34, of Harker Heights, Texas. "They were coming in
from the alleyways, firing AK-47s. I haven't seen anything like this since I
served in the gulf war in 1991."

Deponai, of the brigade's Combat Team, described the fight as "touch-and-go
for a while." In the end, however, he said, "We had overwhelming firepower
on our tanks."

Sunday's battle was a bloody end to the deadliest month since U.S. forces
invaded Iraq on March 20. At least 104 soldiers were killed in November,
including 79 Americans.

Insurgents struck again Monday, killing a U.S. soldier in an attack on a
convoy near Habbaniya, 50 miles west of Baghdad.

The violence last month also took a toll on other members of the U.S.-led
coalition, both military and civilian, and Iraqi allies. At least 16
Italians, seven Spaniards, two Japanese and two South Koreans were killed in
the past few weeks, and about 32 Iraqi police, judges and local council
members were killed.

Chronicle staff writer Robert Collier contributed to this report.

URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/12/02/IRAQ.TMP

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