BAGHDAD, 22 March 2003 — Westerners, opposed to the US-led war on Iraq, are acting as “human shields” at a power plant which provides some six million people in Baghdad with electricity. The area around the Al-Daura power plant was bombed on Thursday, the first night of the US and British military campaign to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Daura also accommodates one of the country’s oil refineries.
Some of the 15 “human shields” at the plant yesterday spoke of why they were risking their lives being there. “My life is not more important than the lives of thousands of Iraqis living in a village close to this plant,” said Michel Pauli, 57, from Switzerland. Another opponent of the war, an American, said: “I am here as a human shield hopefully to prevent an attack on this power plant.”
Marc Eubauks said he was not supporting Saddam’s government but he opposed the US war. “I am not backing the Iraqi regime. It is such a wrong action by the United States. It is not our regime to change it, it is the Iraqi people’s regime. If they want to change it, it is up to them to do so,” he said.
Iraqi officials took around 120 journalists to the Daura power plant to meet the Westerners. “This is one of our key power stations that was part of our national power grid,” Electricity Minister Sabhan Faisel Mahjoob told journalists. “We hope they will not attack power stations. If they destroy this station, it will take us at least five years to rebuild it,” he said.
Iraq’s power grid was heavily bombed by US-led multinational forces in the 1991 war to oust Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Iraq has suffered intermittent blackouts since then, but cuts have increased recently. Mahjoob said Thursday and yesterday’s air and missile attacks against Baghdad and other Iraqi province had caused power cuts. “Between 10 to 15 areas were effected by power cuts as a result of bombing all over Iraq,” he said. But Mahjoob said there was no major destruction of Iraq’s power stations so far.
