The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum

=> Several killed as US bombs wrong target

Several killed as US bombs wrong target

Posted by Tiglath (Guest) - Sunday, January 9 2005, 6:17:14 (CET) from 203.214.71.35 - 203.214.71.35 - Windows XP - Internet Explorer Website: Website title:

Several killed as US bombs wrong target January 9, 2005 - 2:28PM Page Tools Email to a friend Printer format A US warplane mistakenly bombed a house in northern Iraq, killing several people in an attack likely to inflame anti-American anger ahead of controversial elections due at the end of the month. Furious residents of the village of Aaytha, south of the city of Mosul, said the air strike flattened a house and killed 14 civilians. Television pictures showed 14 freshly dug graves after the bombing in the early hours of yesterday. The US military said at least five people died after an F-16 warplane dropped a 250 kg bomb on the wrong target. ''The house was not the intended target for the air strike. The intended target was another location nearby,'' the US army said. It added that it ''deeply regrets the loss of possibly innocent lives'' and that an investigation was under way. Iraqi anger over civilian casualties in Iraq has dented US efforts to get the country behind the elections. Many Sunni Arab leaders say violence in Sunni areas will make fair elections impossible, and plan to boycott the polls. Large numbers of Sunni Arab Iraqis say they are simply too scared to vote. Advertisement AdvertisementInsurgent groups - mainly comprising Sunni former members of Saddam Hussein's regime, nationalist Iraqis wanting foreign troops to leave, and foreign Arab fighters with links to al-Qaeda - are waging a deadly campaign to derail the polls. A suicide bomb killed four people near a checkpoint south of Baghdad yesterday, while militants abducted three senior Iraqi officials in the same area, police said. A female French journalist has also been missing since Wednesday and is feared to be the latest foreign victim of a kidnapping spree. Residents of Aaytha said US army vehicles surrounded part of the village before the strike. The US military said the stray bomb was dropped during an operation to capture an insurgent cell leader. Last May, there was widespread anger among Iraqis after US marines attacked an isolated house in the desert in western Iraq, killing around 40 people, including six women. Survivors said the house was attacked just after a wedding party and that all the victims were innocent civilians. The American military said that while a party may have been taking place, the house was a base for insurgents. US air strikes on targets in the city of Fallujah also caused controversy last year - the American military insisted the attacks targeted insurgents but local doctors and residents said many civilians were also killed. Under pressure to quell the persistent violence ahead of Iraq's elections, the US military said it had captured a key leader of a northern cell of an Islamist group headed by al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, responsible for most of the bloodiest attacks. Britain is expected to announce this week it is sending up to 650 extra troops to areas it controls in southern Iraq to boost security ahead of the elections, Britain's Sunday Telegraph reported. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is debating whether to set up elite hit squads to target leaders of the Iraq insurgency in a new strategy based on tactics used against leftist guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago, Newsweek magazine reported. One proposal would send US Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads of hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shi'ite militiamen to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathisers, Newsweek said, citing military insiders familiar with the discussions. The squads may operate across the border in Syria, Newsweek said on its website, but added it was unclear whether they would assassinate leaders or be involved in ''snatch'' operations. - Reuters --------------------- - BACK TO INDEX - REPLY - QUOTE - EDIT - DELETE -

The full topic: Several killed as US bombs wrong target Tiglath - Sunday, January 9 2005, 6:17:14 (CET) Re: Several killed as US bombs wrong target parhad - 01/09 07:14 Re: A lesson from the America wisdom!! Honest Dude - 01/10 04:58

Content-length: 4328 Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/vnd.ms-excel, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, applicatio... Accept-encoding: gzip, deflate Accept-language: en-au Cache-control: no-cache Connection: Keep-Alive Cookie: *hidded* Host: www.insideassyria.com Referer: http://www.insideassyria.com/rkvsf3/rkvsf_core.php?.CRiy. User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9