US denies targeting 'wedding party' in air strike
American forces have denied targeting a wedding party near Iraq’s border with Syria, in an air strike that allegedly killed more than 40 people, including children.
The military said the desert target was a suspected safe house for foreign fighters from Syria, but Iraqis said the helicopter had attacked a wedding party.
Associated Press Television News footage showed a truck containing bloodied bodies, many wrapped in blankets, piled one atop the other. Several were children, one of whom was decapitated. The body of a girl who appeared to be less than five years old lay in a white sheet, her legs riddled with wounds and her dress soaked in blood.
The attack happened at about 2.45am local time yesterday in a desert region near the border with Syria and Jordan, according to Lt Col Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of Ramadi, the provincial capital about 250 miles to the east.
He said 42 to 45 people died, including 15 children and 10 women. Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi, put the death toll at 45.
The area, a desolate region populated only by shepherds, is popular with smugglers, including weapons smugglers, and the US military suspects militants use it as a route to slip in from Syria to fight the Americans. It is under constant surveillance by American forces.
Military officials in Washington refused to address the question of whether anyone from a wedding party was among the people killed.
In a statement, the US Central Command said coalition forces conducted a military operation at 3am against a ”suspected foreign fighter safe house” in the open desert, about 50 miles south west of Husaybah and 15 miles from the Syrian border.
The coalition troops came under hostile fire and “close air support was provided”, the statement said. The troops recovered weapons, Iraqi and Syrian currency, some passports and some satellite communications gear, it said.
APTN video footage showed mourners with shovels digging graves over a wide dusty area in Ramadi, the provincial capital where bodies of the dead had been taken to obtain death certificates. A group of men crouched and wept around one coffin.
Iraqis interviewed on the videotape said revellers had fired volleys of gunfire into the air in a traditional wedding celebration before the attack took place. American troops have sometimes mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire.
Al-Ani, the doctor, said American troops came to investigate the gunfire and left. However, al-Ani said, helicopters later arrived and attacked the area. Two houses were destroyed, he said.
“This was a wedding and the (US) planes came and attacked the people at a house. Is this the democracy and freedom that (President George) Bush has brought us?” said a man on the videotape, Dahham Harraj. “There was no reason.”
Lt Col Dan Williams, a US military spokesman, said earlier that the military was investigating.
“I cannot comment on this because we have not received any reports from our units that this has happened nor that any were involved in such a tragedy,” Williams wrote in an email in response to a question from The Associated Press.
“We take all these requests seriously and we have forwarded this inquiry to the Joint Operations Centre for further review and any other information that may be available.”
The strike, widely reported in Iraq and the Middle East as an attack on a wedding party, comes at a time when American prestige is under fire as the United States tries to stabilise Iraq before the June 30 transfer of sovereignty.
Anti-American sentiment has risen following last month’s bloody US Marine siege of Fallujah, a Shiite Muslim uprising and the scandal over treatment of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.
