FALLUJAH,
Iraq, September 9 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Women and
children were among 12 people killed in an overnight fresh US
missile strike of the western Baghdad
city of Fallujah, press reports and medical sources said Thursday, September 9.
Local
residents removed bodies from the rubble of a house in the city
demolished in the dead of night by a US missile while people were
sleeping, a correspondent for Agence France-Presse (AFP) on the scene
reported.
Doctor
Mushtak Taleb from Fallujah's general hospital said 12 bodies had been
brought in, including five children and two women, and that at least
nine people had been wounded since the raids began.
Sleeping
Witnesses
told AFP that the family who lived in the single-storey house was
sleeping on the roof when the missile ploughed through the building,
blowing their bodies to smithereens.
The
roof had collapsed entirely and two small cranes were trying to lift
up the debris to allow rescuers to search for more people.
Several
neighboring houses in the Nowad Al-Dhubat district were damaged and
children could be seen sifting through rubble and mangled metal to
help collect pieces of flesh.
Local
inhabitants were furious over the raid, further to escalate
anti-American sentiments among ordinary Iraqis.
"We
were sleeping on the roof because the electricity keeps going off at
night. When the explosion went off, the blast threw me back by at
least five meters," said neighbor Khaled Abbas.
"First
I thought the explosion was in my house but when I awoke from the
shock I saw that the neighbours had been hit," he told AFP.
He
said the owner of the house had four wives, two of whom lived in the
house with at least 10 children.
"All
the children next door used to fill the streets with noise. Today I
hope they will be like birds in heaven," Abbas said.
"I
want to know why the Americans decided to bomb a family with
children," he said, with an apparent expression of anger.
US
Claims
 |
|
Bodies
of Iraqi women and children (AFP)
|
The
US
military, for its part, claimed it had carried out a raid in Fallujah
overnight against a hideout used by operatives of suspected Abu Musab
Al-Zarqawi's network in
Iraq
– blamed for most attacks against American occupation forces.
But
local inhabitants dismissed the allegations, citing the fall of women
and children as victims to the American air raids. Iraqi fighters in
Fallujah denied
in June 25, the presence of Al-Zarqawi in their town adding they were
simply defending their homeland against occupation forces.
At
least 700 Iraqis, mostly
women and children , were killed and 1500 others injured when
the
US
occupation forces imposed a tight siege on the town and intensified
air strikes on its densely-populated areas.
Hundreds
of houses and the town’s only hospital were demolished by the
US
aircraft in the raids, putting
Washington
under an intense wave of criticism by world human rights groups.
But
the overwhelming firepower of the
US
occupation troops has failed so far to break the staunch will of
Fallujah resistance fighters.
The
US military reported late Wednesday, September 8, that one of its
helicopters had crashed near Fallujah but did not specify whether it
had been shot down and said only that the four-man crew was safe.
17
Iraqis Killed
Another
17 Iraqis were killed and 51 wounded in the a US-led Iraqi overnight
assault on Tall Afar, hospital sources said Thursday.
As
the seven-hour bombardment dragged on until morning, clashes flared
between US forces and fighters on the ground. Bodies strewn in the
streets could not be collected until quiet returned, said an AFP
reporter.
