BAGHDAD, 28 March 2003 — Dark pools of dried blood stain the road, human body parts lie grotesquely in the rubble, and the stench of charred flesh lingers in the dusty air.
Twenty-four hours after two, possibly rogue US, missiles slammed into a busy market area in a residential northern Baghdad suburb on Wednesday, killing at least 15 civilians, distraught Iraqis wander stunned through the scenes of carnage.
There is sorrow at the loss of loved ones, and fury at US President George W. Bush, who had promised to limit the loss of innocent civilian life. “Look! Is this a military position?” shouted Ahmed Abdul-Jabbar, 27, pointing at what was left of his house, demolished by the blasts.
His two-month-old baby and his wife are in hospital with shrapnel wounds to the head. The baby’s cot and milk bottle survived intact.
“Bush wants to change the (Iraqi) regime, so why does he attack civilians? This is unforgivable,” added Abdul-Jabbar, whose mother and three sisters were also wounded in the strikes.
Witnesses blamed US missiles, but US military spokesman Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said yesterday the explosions may have been caused by a stray Iraqi missile or deliberate Iraqi sabotage.
The strikes, which caused the highest known civilian casualty toll in a single attack in Baghdad in the war so far, devastated a poor residential area in the Al-Shaab district. At least 15 people were burned to death and 30 more wounded.
An open-air fruit and vegetable market had opened for a few hours on Wednesday during a lull in air and missile strikes by US and British forces. Shoes left in the market testify to the panic of those who fought desperately to escape as the missiles struck.
The Al-Shaab neighborhood is overwhelmingly Shiite, the Iraqi majority supposed to be the main beneficiaries of the US drive to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
“Bush said he will not attack civilians. Yesterday 15 people were killed,” said Jamila Mohsen, 55, wounded in the blasts, as were her two daughters — Baida, 20, and Saba, 15. “The missiles destroyed our homes and killed our families, what is his justification? Are we a military base?”
The US and Britain insist they only target military positions in and around Baghdad, using precision-guided weapons to keep civilian casualties to a minimum.
“Isn’t it enough, what we’re suffering?” said Ali Hussein, whose two children were wounded. “My shop was burned, my car demolished. I don’t care, but why our families and children?” he added.
In another ruined house nearby, schoolteacher Hamdiya Ahmed, 35, sobs for the loss of her mother while rummaging in the rubble for a few scraps of family papers.
“Yesterday was horror, horror itself. We were having breakfast when the missiles fell. People began running in circles, they were hysterical. Some had lost arms, others their legs. We were looking for each other under the rubble to see who died and who survived,” said Ahmed.
“Bush is barbaric. He knows nothing about civilization,” she said. “If he has any humanity he would not do this to us.”
Dressed in black, she surveys what is left of her flat — furniture reduced to matchwood, clothes and curtains burnt, shards of metal and shreds of human flesh.
To compound her distress, she cannot even go to her mother’s funeral. Male relatives have taken the body to her hometown in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, but heavy fighting there means Ahmed cannot travel.
