Another
Family Shot Dead In Baghdad
By
Justin Huggler
Independent,
UK
10 August 2003
The
abd al-Kerim family didn't have a chance. American soldiers opened fire
on their car with no warning and at close quarters. They killed the
father and three of the children, one of them only eight years old.
Now only the mother, Anwar, and a 13-year-old daughter are alive to
tell how the bullets tore through the windscreen and how they screamed
for the Americans to stop.
"We never did
anything to the Americans and they just killed us," the heavily
pregnant Ms abd al-Kerim said. "We were calling out to them 'Stop,
stop, we are a family', but they kept on shooting."
The story of how
Adel abd al-Kerim and three of his children were killed emerged yesterday,
exactly 100 days after President George Bush declared the war in Iraq
was over. In Washington yesterday, Mr 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."
But in this city
Iraqi civilians still die needlessly almost every day at the hands of
nervous, trigger-happy American soldiers.
Doctors said the
father and his two daughters would have survived if they had received
treatment quicker. Instead, they were left to bleed to death because
the Americans refused to allow anyone to take them to hospital.
It happened at 9.30
at night, an hour after sunset, but long before the start of the curfew
at 11pm. The Americans had set up roadblocks in the Tunisia quarter
of Baghdad, where the abd al-Kerims live. The family pulled up to the
roadblock sensibly, slowly and carefully, so as not to alarm the Americans.
But then pandemonium
broke out. American soldiers were shooting in every direction. They
just turned on the abd al-Kerims' 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.
A terrible misunderstanding
took place. The Americans thought they were under attack from Iraqi
resistance forces, according to several Iraqi witnesses. These are the
circumstances of most killings of Iraqi civilians: a US patrol comes
under rocket-propelled grenade attack and the soldiers panic and fire
randomly.
This time there
was no attack. Another car, driven by an Iraqi youth, Sa'ad al-Azawi,
drove too fast up to another checkpoint further up the street. Al-Azawi
and his two passengers did not hear an order to stop, as their stereo
was turned up too loud. The US soldiers, thinking they were under attack,
panicked and opened fire.
In the darkness
of one of Baghdad's frequent power cuts, other US soldiers on the street
heard gunfire and thought they were under attack. They, too, reacted
by opening fire, though they could not see what was going on. Soldiers
manning look-out posts on a nearby building joined in, firing down the
street in the dark.
It was then that
the abd al-Kerims drew up to the checkpoint. The panicking US soldiers
turned on their car and shot the family to pieces.
"It was anarchy,"
said Ali al-Issawi, who lives on the street and witnessed the whole
thing. "The Americans were firing at each other."
There was plenty
of evidence lying in the street under the hot sun. Empty bullet casings
lay everywhere. Bullet holes marked the walls and gates of nearby houses.
Several parked cars were riddled with bullet-holes, their windows smashed
and tyres shredded. From the spread of the bullet holes all over the
street, it was clear the soldiers had fired in every direction.
Sa'ad al-Azawi,
the driver of the other car, was killed. The Americans dragged his two
passengers out and beat them, still thinking they were resistance, Mr
al-Issawi said. Watching from his house nearby, Mr al-Issawi did not
know that al-Azawi was dead, and when the car burst into flames, he
tried to rush over to help the young man.
"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."
Further down the
street, Anwar abd al-Kerim, who was heavily pregnant and had somehow
managed to escape injury in the car as bullets rained all around her,
got out of the car, holding her wounded eight-year-old daughter Mervet,
and sought help from her brother, who lived down the road.
She had to leave
in the car her injured daughters, 16-year-old Ia and 13-year-old Haded,
along with her husband, Adel, who was bleeding badly and groaning. Her
18-year-old son, Haider, was already dead. A bullet went between his
eyes.
"I saw my sister
running towards me with her daughter in her arms and blood pouring from
her," said Ms abd al-Kerim's brother, 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!'
"We could see
the other girls and their brother lying on the back seat of the car.
They would not let us go to the hospital." Ia was not as badly
injured as the others. "After a while they released her and let
her come to us," Mr 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.
"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."