Insurgents Blamed For Using Children As Human Shields In Iraq Airstrikes Deaths
BAGHDAD, Oct. 12 — The American military said on Friday that it was vigorously investigating a Thursday evening airstrike on a stronghold of insurgent leaders northwest of Baghdad that also killed nine children and six women. The civilian toll is one of the highest to result from a single American military action since the beginning of the Iraq war.
Rear Adm. Greg Smith, an American military spokesman here, said the killings were “absolutely regrettable,” but blamed the enemy fighters for engaging American forces while using civilians as a shield.
“We do not target civilians,” the admiral said in an interview on Friday. “But when our forces are fired upon, as they are routinely, then they have no option but to return fire.”
The airstrike, near Tharthar Lake, a Sunni Arab region about 75 miles northwest of Baghdad, killed 19 senior-level insurgents with ties to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia after insurgents first fired on a unit of American soldiers approaching a residential structure, the United States military said. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is a homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence says is foreign led.
“A ground element came under fire from that building that we had to neutralize,” Admiral Smith said. It was not clear on Friday whether American commanders knew that so many civilians were in or near the structure when they authorized the airstrike.
“The enemy has a vote here,” Admiral Smith said, “and when he chooses to surround himself with civilians and then fire upon U.S. forces, our forces have no choice but to return a commensurate amount of fire. Which is what they did last evening.”
On Friday, a suicide bomber pushing a candy cart into a playground in the northern town of Tuz Khurmato killed one child, a 8-year-old boy, and wounded 23 others, a senior police official said. A security guard, whose child was playing in the park, was also killed after he tried to subdue the bomber as he entered the playground, said Lt. Col. Abbas Muhammad, the city’s police chief.
Colonel Muhammad identified the guard as Abbas Sameen, 35, the father of three children. He said the dead boy was Qasem Hasan Ismael.
Friday was a national holiday, when Sunni Arabs broke their fast to celebrate the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. As is customary, the children in Tuz Khurmato, a religiously mixed city of Sunni Arabs, Shiite, Turkmen and Kurdish residents, were playing in a temporary playground, with carnival rides and confection booths in a lot usually used for truck parking.
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This is what cowards do. What else is new? It is a typical tactic of guerilla armies. The way to counter this strategy is with counter-information. Warn the Iraqis and the Arab world that their jihadis are scum, and that this is one of their tactics. Dispell the “ghetto mentality” that these ragheads have for one another. Show them that while we would say that civilian deaths are tragic and regrettable, which shows a working moral compass. The jihadis would say inshallah, which shows only contempt for innocents.
Lastly, make it clear that the long war against jihadis will go on until the Muslim world turns against jihadism.
And in war people die. If that is acceptable to the average
jihadi sympathizer, then STFU Muslim fools, cause the scunion that you pigs brought on yourselves has only just begin.
Muslims: Reform your religion before it is too late.
October 14th, 2007 at 8:08 amI hate people who hide behind kids -they are
I hope they go to hell.
October 14th, 2007 at 9:24 amCommendable on the part of that off duty security guard to sacrifice his life like that.
That is the kind of heroism that Iraq needs.
October 14th, 2007 at 7:30 pm