U.S. offers 'regrets' over mounting civilian casualties
U.S. offers 'regrets' over mounting civilian casualties
Agencies, Baghdad/Miami
The United States expressed "regret" at the shooting deaths of seven women and children at a U.S. roadblock in Iraq, as dozens more civilians were reported killed in U.S.-British airstrikes.
Mounting civilian casualties on Tuesday stoked international unease at the U.S.-led war, already high after seven women and children were shot dead at a U.S. checkpoint in Central Iraq.
"I'd like to express our regrets to the families of the Iraqis killed yesterday at the checkpoint near Al Najaf. The loss of any innocent life is truly tragic," said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff.
But he also blamed "the climate established by the Iraqi regime" as contributing to the shooting at a checkpoint at Najaf, 150 kilometers (95 miles) south of Baghdad, on Monday afternoon.
U.S. President George W. Bush also offered his "regrets" at the deaths of Iraqi civilians, but blamed the casualties on Saddam while backing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld against allegations that he had meddled in military planning to limit the number of troops deployed to Iraq.
Rumsfeld has fervently denied the allegations.
Surviving members of a family whose van was fired on by troops in Iraq said they were traveling toward allied lines because they thought an air-dropped leaflet had advised them to flee for safety.
In a report published on Wednesday in the Miami Herald and other Knight Ridder newspapers, Bakhat Hassan said American soldiers had waved his family's car through a checkpoint as they left their village on Monday. But at the next checkpoint, the soldiers fired.
"We were thinking these Americans want us to be safe," Hassan, 35, said through a translator.
Hassan, interviewed on Tuesday by a Knight Ridder correspondent at the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital near Najaf, south of Baghdad, said 11 members of his family were killed in the incident - his daughters, aged 2 and 5, his son, 3, his parents, two older brothers, their wives and two nieces, ages 12 and 15. His wife, Lamea, who is nine-months pregnant, said she saw her children die.
"I saw the heads of my two little girls come off," said Lamea Hassan, 36. "My girls - I watched their heads come off their bodies. My son is dead."
U.S. officials originally said seven were killed; reporters at the scene placed the death toll at 10. Hassan's father later died at the Army hospital. A brother who is being treated there may not survive, a doctor said.
Another brother, a sister-in-law and a 7-year-old child were released to bury the dead.
The soldiers who fired on the family were following orders not to let vehicles approach checkpoints, U.S. officials said. Troops in the area were on edge after an Iraqi army officer posing as a taxi driver killed four soldiers in a suicide attack on Saturday.
The Hassans decided to make the journey after an American helicopter dropped fliers over their farming village that showed a drawing of a family sitting at a table, eating and smiling, with a message written in Arabic.
They planned to go to Karbala. They stopped at an Army checkpoint on the northbound road near Sahara, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Karbala, and were told to go on, Hassan said.
But "the Iraqi family misunderstood" what the soldiers were saying, Furbush said.
A few kilometers (miles) later, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle came into view. The family waved as it came closer. The soldiers opened fire.
Hassan remembers an Army medic at the scene of the killings speaking Arabic.
"He told us it was a mistake and the soldiers were sorry," Hassan said.
Human rights watchdog Amnesty International asked the United States to undertake a full, independent inquiry into the shooting.
In Brussels the European Commission called the checkpoint killings "a horrible and tragic incident... It is not an isolated incident. Too many civilians have already lost their lives in this war.