BAGHDAD, 21 May 2003 — US troops launched night raids on private homes early yesterday and mounted patrols and roadblocks across the capital as they tried to stem the lawlessness that has left many of its five million residents too scared to venture out.
A first raid by a new military police task force established to “aggressively reduce crime” resulted in 15 arrests and the confiscation of eight Kalashnikovs, $30,000 in Iraqi dinars, and some fake passports, US Central Command said.
Another nocturnal swoop by the 141st Field Artillery on two homes suspected of harboring gunmen loyal to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party netted almost three kilos of Semtex high explosive, Kalashnikovs and pistols, and resulted in eight suspects being detained. The 2 a.m. raid, witnessed by AFP, came just hours after two US troops were seriously injured by snipers in an adjacent district of the city.
Some two dozen troops in Humvees filed through the darkened streets of Baghdad, which remains under curfew from 11:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. as US forces struggle to control the car-jackings, burglaries and violent crime which have terrorized the city. The soldiers launched simultaneous swoops on the two houses a few doors apart in a middle-class street of Al-Adhamiya district.
“According to our intelligence, these people are suspected Baath members who are trying to get organized to launch significant attacks on coalition forces,” said Sgt. Christian Wamsley.
Three men detained in one house were bound and gagged after a huge stash of ammunition was found in their vehicle. A sister explained that the helmet and pistols were mementoes of her pilot husband who had been shot down by the Americans in the 1991 Gulf War, prompting a US officer to express his condolences.
But when she then insisted the Semtex was for fishing in the Tigris, one soldier shouted back: “You could blow up a bridge with that.” Down the street, the five women were terrified as they huddled on the porch with their cuffed men folk, six children and a baby, while the US troops rifled through the ornament-filled cabinets of their well-to-do home.
“Tell me what good reason you have to attack an Iraqi family in the middle of the night,” one of the women pleaded, clearly uncomfortable in her nightgown in front of the all-male artillerymen.
Her husband explained that he had only bought the Kalashnikovs a few days earlier, after burglars stole two cars belonging to his family. The women said they feared being raped if the US troops removed their weapons and men folk in such an overt way.
Meanwhile, a leading WHO official said yesterday Iraq is facing a catastrophe with hospitals working well below capacity and patchy electricity supplies increasing the risk of water contamination and disease. “It’s a catastrophe of the non-functioning of a state, rather than the humanitarian crisis that we were preparing for beforehand,” World Health Organization’s David Nabarro told reporters in Geneva.
Nabarro, executive director of WHO’s sustainable development and healthy environments unit, said he estimated the Iraqi health system to be functioning at about one fifth of its capacity. Health workers are willing to work but are unable to do so due to poor security or lack of supplies, he said. Some 38 cases of cholera have now been confirmed in the southern city of Basra, the WHO official said.
“For each confirmed case you can assume there will be an awful lot of others not confirmed,” he said. There have been no confirmed deaths from cholera, he added. Other diseases have been reported in the country, including diarrheal diseases, leishmaniasis in southern Iraq, measles, dysentery, hepatitis and malaria. Nabarro said that the current situation was due to the breakdown of Iraq’s internal systems and a vacuum of power, rather than being a direct result of the war on Iraq led by the US.
