Anger
MountsAfter Iraqi Arms Dump Carnage
By Peter
Ford | Staff writer of csmonitor.com
27 April, 2003
BAGHDAD
Munzen Sabr Hassoun had thought the war was over. But as he sat in a
blood spattered robe at a window in Zafaraniyah hospital Saturday morning,
heaving with sobs while medical workers laid his wife's body in a plywood
coffin outside, peace was more painful.
Mr. Hassoun's wife was among the at least six people killed and some
50 injured when a huge collection of captured Iraqi weapons and munitions
exploded at a US base on the outskirts of Baghdad early on Saturday
morning, provoking deep anger among local residents.
The blast, which
caused the worst civilian injuries in the capital since US troops arrived
here, hurled fireballs of shells and grenades high into the air, witnesses
said, and launched at least one missile into a nearby residential district.
US officials
said the explosion was caused by unknown men who fired incendiary flares
into the munitions collection and disposal facility at about eight o'clock
on Saturday morning. None of the men was caught, and the explanation
could not be independently verified. One US soldier was reported wounded
in a firefight with the attackers.
The mood in
the poverty-stricken streets of Zafaraniyah was angry, as residents
blamed the American military for the deadly barrage that rained on their
village.
"This disaster
is more than happened during the war," said Ghazi Fahed, director
of the local hospital, where victims' bodies lay wrapped in blankets
on gurneys in the courtyard. "During the war we did not see anything
as horrible as this."
The weapons
dump that went up in a series of massive explosions was one of three
main facilities around Baghdad where US troops have been gathering Iraqi
munitions and destroying them in controlled detonations. It contained
small arms, munitions, howitzer rounds and other weaponry including
Frog 7 missiles, according to Lt. Col. Jack Kammerer, the local zone
commander.
Parts of an
unidentified missile lay by a water-filled crater left by the explosion
that destroyed Hassoun's home on 64th St., a dirt road between rows
of two story brick and concrete buildings.
Between 75 and
100 US soldiers operating the camp fled the explosions - some in their
underpants and others barefoot according to eyewitnesses.
"All I
know is they said get out of here and we ran," said one soldier,
who asked not to be identified. "It went hundreds of feet in the
air and there were fireballs," he added.
A few hundred
yards away, Suhad Abdullah was preparing her children's breakfast. "My
baby was playing beside me. Suddenly there was a huge explosion and
I was wounded. I don't know what happened after that. The building fell
down," she said from her hospital bed.
As a mechanical
digger tore at the ruins of Mr. Hassoun's house, searching for three
children believed to be under the rubble, neighbor Yassin Alwan said
he had delivered a letter to the US base last week complaining that
shrapnel from controlled explosions had fallen in his garden.
"I said
why not take the munitions to the desert," he recalled bitterly.
"Most of Iraq is desert either by nature or by Saddam."
"Saddam
put weapons between houses, and that was a bad action", said Dr.
Fahed. But you Americans, you should help us. We told them (US soldiers)
many times that this place is not fit for such explosions."
Lt. Col. Kammerer
encountered local people's rage when he sought to bring help to volunteers
searching for survivors in the four houses in Zafaraniyah that were
destroyed. Earlier, a Bradley fighting vehicle crew had turned back
from the neighborhood after being stoned.
"We've
had a lot of problems with angry mobs", Kammerer said, after radioing
his HQ to call for a digger. "I was confronted by 250 people who
pushed us away, chanting. I think they believe we caused the problem,
when in fact we were attacked.
"My effort
now will be to convince the people that we were not responsible,"
he added. "Obviously somebody feels it is necessary to attack us.
Somebody appears to be trying to create a situation here."
A repentant
member of the Fedayeen Saddam, a militia loyal to the former regime,
told The Christian Science Monitor in a recent interview that his orders
had been to wait until the end of the war, and then stage incidents
that would cause Iraqi civilian casualties that could be blamed on the
Americans.
Residents of
Zafaraniyah were certainly blaming the Americans for Saturday's disaster.
As surgeons operated on one casualty, hospital administrators were using
their computers to run off impromptu posters reading, "Americans
are not better than Saddam" and "No [to] carelessness about
innocents lives".
Outside the
hospital, a noisy funeral cortege of pickup trucks bearing coffins and
buses set off for a procession around the neighborhood. From a mosque
minaret, a loudspeaker broadcast a message of restraint.
"Please
do not carry your guns," the voice pleaded with protesters. "We
will go peacefully."
"We did
not expect such things to happen from America. We are shocked,"
said Fahed. "The people are angry."