BAGHDAD, 12 April 2003 — Early yesterday US Marines suddenly disappeared from the main square in front of the Sheraton Hotel, which they and their tanks had previously surrounded. Compared to the previous day, the US military presence throughout the city center was drastically reduced, and so the looting inevitably increased.
An Iraqi was towing an ambulance behind his car; others were using the stretchers from inside it to transport looted goods. Even police cars were stolen. By early evening, as many as a dozen buildings were ablaze.
Jessam, a 48-year-old Iraqi, asked me if I was American, pressing to be told how I had come to Baghdad. He aggressively asked if I was happy that US Marines were in Baghdad, adding before I could answer that “we’re not happy about the Americans controlling our city.” The group of 20 or so Iraqis who had gathered round us nodded in agreement.
However, there are other Iraqis who continue to walk up to the Americans and give them flowers and water, along with a thumbs-up signal and a handshake.
The Marines appear to be very edgy, even terrified, following the human bombing on Thursday. And there are also those among them who are plain arrogant. When one discovered a bag of raisins in this reporter’s carry-bag while conducting a body search, and was offered some of them, he replied: “If I want them, I’ll take the whole bag. We came, we saw, we conquered.”
On the approaches to Saddam International Airport, at the last exit before the airport, Arab News saw locals removing the charred bodies of civilians which had been there for four days.
Three American tanks blocked the road, towing away the wrecked and burned-out cars. There were 17 wrecked cars, and 50 corpses.
Bystanders told Arab News that four days ago the Marines had similarly blocked the highway and ordered the civilians driving these cars to stop. When the drivers saw the tanks they panicked, and speeded for the exit road. One tank opened fire on the front car, and then the rest of the tanks joined in.
All 17 cars, and everyone in them, was set ablaze.
One of the Marines involved in the shooting was also involved in the cleaning up operation yesterday. He approached one of the Iraqis pulling bodies from the wreckage, who had just told Arab News that it was his brother.
The Iraqi asked the blond, blue-eyed 22-year-old Marine: “Why? Why?”
“I told him to stop, I told him to stop, but he didn’t and so I had to shoot him. I’m sorry,” the Marine told him, as the Iraqi put his hand over his eyes to hold back the tears. There are many rumors concerning the fate of Saddam Hussein, but the most persistent one is that he is in Moscow after having cut a deal brokered by the CIA.
At 8.30 p.m. a crowd of Iraqi civilians — the youngest a girl of nine, the eldest a woman of 60 — gathered in front of the Marines still left outside Palestine Hotel. They brought with them a mural — a carpet on which had been woven a pattern consisting of a series of candles encircling a bomb — as well as their voices of protest.
“Why are you here?” demanded a woman in her thirties. “Why are you killing our people. We do not want war. We do not want you to kill us. Today you have killed even more civilians.”
She repeated, time and time again as the crowd began to swell with other Iraqis, and both Japanese and French “human shields”: “You are 300,000 and we are only 300, but we will come here every day until there is peace.”
An Iraqi man shouted in classical Arabic: “You are here to rape our women and give drugs to our children.”
