Re: Is that they call discriminate fire?

This story at Reuters is referring to all but 8 of the dead as enemy
combatants, which is more likely.  After all, this isn't Chechnya!

Jarg

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20031201/ts_nm/iraq_dc
"Michael Petukhov" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20031201/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_unrest_samarra&cid=1514&ncid=1480
>
> SAMARRA, Iraq (AFP) - Scenes of devastation dotted the Iraqi town of
> Samarra after fierce clashes between US forces and insurgents in which
> senior police and hospital officials said at least eight civilians
> were killed and dozens wounded by US fire.
>
> US commanders previously said they killed 46 Iraqis, all of them
> insurgents, in the clashes on Sunday afternoon and evening, which they
> described as the heaviest faced in Iraq (news - web sites) by the 4th
> Infantry Division which patrols the region.
>
> On Monday, they upped the death toll to 54, without specifying whether
> the additional dead were insurgents or civilians.
>
> Samarra hospital accident and emergency department anaesthetist Bassem
> Ibrahim said "we received the bodies of eight civilians, including a
> woman and a child".
>
> It was not immediately clear whether the dead civilians included two
> Iranian pilgrims said to have been killed in their bus.
>
> Hospital director Abed Tawfiq told AFP "more than 60 people wounded by
> gunfire and shrapnel from US rounds are being treated at the
> hospital."
>
> He said there were so many casualties from US fire during the intense
> clashes with insurgents who ambushed American convoys in the town
> Sunday afternoon and evening that they had had to be treated in the
> hospital's corridors.
>
> The town's police chief Colonel Ismail Mahmud Mohammed said around 20
> of the wounded sustained their injuries while worshipping at a mosque
> during sunset prayers.
>
> He said the insurgents who had attacked US forces had withdrawn when
> the Americans had returned fire, and charged that the troops had done
> so indiscriminately with all weapons in their arsenal.
>
> "There was an attack and a exchange of fire between the Americans and
> the resistance lasting half an hour. The resistance withdrew, then
> bombardments started using all manner of weapons in all directions and
> without any discrimination," said Mohammed.
>
> "Eight civilians were killed, including a child, and 45 wounded, some
> 20 of them in a mosque during sunset prayers," he said.
>
> Meanwhile, AFP correspondents saw a civilian bus completely burned out
> 30 metres (yards) from the main entrance to the town's hospital.
>
> The correspondents were shown two Iranian passports said to belong to
> pilgrims killed in the vehicle. Nine others, also Iranian pilgrims,
> were wounded, said the police guard outside the hospital, Mohammed
> Ali.
>
> Two middle-aged men were seen hugging each other in an agony of
> emotion remorse alongside the bus.
>
> The impact of a rocket could be seen on one of the outer walls of the
> Al-Shafii mosque, some 50 metres (yards) from the hospital. Its
> windows had been shattered by the blast.
>
> Ali Abdullah Amin, 12, who was being treated at the hospital with his
> five-year-old brother for wounds sustained in the mosque, told AFP
> that their father had been killed in the firing.
>
> In Muutasen Street, where a US convoy came under attack earlier in the
> day, a white car parked outside a chemist's shop had been completely
> flattened, apparently by a tank.