MOSUL, 17 April 2003 — Deadly gunfire broke out in Mosul for a second day yesterday, and some of the wounded said they were shot by American troops deployed to restore order in Iraq’s third-largest city.
Seventeen people were killed, hospital officials said, allegedly by US forces. At least 18 were injured in two days of violence, underscoring the fact that although the Pentagon believes the worst of the fighting is over, peace has not come to this country.
“They are killing us and no one’s talking about it,” Zahra Yassin said at a city hospital with her wounded son. “We want Saddam back. At least there was security.”
In Doha, Qatar, the US Central Command confirmed that American troops killed about seven Iraqis during a demonstration Tuesday, but did not immediately comment on accusations that US Marines shot civilians yesterday. Hospital administrators put the death toll at 14 Tuesday and three yesterday.
Serious disturbances broke out in Mosul after this majority Arab city fell without a fight on Friday and Kurdish and US forces moved in. Tensions have escalated between the Arabs and the large Kurdish minority, and looting was rampant until US troops restored a degree of order.
Tuesday’s shooting began when members of a large crowd turned violent in front of the governor’s office during a speech by Mashaan Al-Juburi.
Al-Juburi assumed the governorship after the city fell, and is opposed by many who disapprove of his past as a journalist with the newspaper of Saddam Hussein’s ruling Baath Party. He also is an ally of Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish Democratic Party, who controls the western section of the Kurdish autonomous region.
People started throwing stones at him, a car was set afire and turned over, and people started throwing stones at the Americans, said Sathi Taha 32, who was injured.
“They started firing at us,” he said. “The crowd dispersed. Then the crowd returned .... then the Americans fired again. I ran, I crossed the street. I was hit in my leg, and when I was hit in my shoulder I fell on the ground.”
Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks of the US Central Command said yesterday the American troops were trying to secure the government building when a crowd began throwing rocks at the troops, punching them, spitting at them and setting cars afire.
He said some of the Americans fired back after shots were fired at them, and some members of the crowd began trying to climb over a wall into the government compound in a coordinated “assault.”
He said American Marines and Special Forces had shot and killed “somewhere on the order of seven,” Iraqis in the incident.
Yesterday’s shooting apparently began with an attempt by police to drive looters away from the Central Bank, opposite the governor’s office. The bank was in flames yesterday afternoon and old Iraqi coins lay scattered in the street nearby.
Wounded police officer Amar Ghanem Abdullah, 25, was among the police ordered to stop the looting. He said the police shot in the air to disperse the crowd and then the Americans fired from roof of the governor’s building.
