U.S. Forces Shoot TEN Women, Children

MIKE BURN

Quote:
10 Dead After Vehicle Shelled at Checkpoint

By William Branigin

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A01

NEAR KARBALA, Iraq, March 31 -- As an unidentified four-wheel-drive vehicle came barreling toward an intersection held by troops of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, Capt. Ronny Johnson grew increasingly alarmed. From his position at the intersection, he was heard radioing to one of his forward platoons of M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles to alert it to what he described as a potential threat.

"Fire a warning shot," he ordered as the vehicle kept coming. Then, with increasing urgency, he told the platoon to shoot a 7.62mm machine-gun round into its radiator. "Stop [messing] around!" Johnson yelled into the company radio network when he still saw no action being taken. Finally, he shouted at the top of his voice, "Stop him, Red 1, stop him!"

That order was immediately followed by the loud reports of 25mm cannon fire from one or more of the platoon's Bradleys. About half a dozen shots were heard in all.

"Cease fire!" Johnson yelled over the radio. Then, as he peered into his binoculars from the intersection on Highway 9, he roared at the platoon leader, "You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!"

So it was that on a warm, hazy day in central Iraq, the fog of war descended on Bravo Company.

Fifteen Iraqi civilians were packed inside the Toyota, officers said, along with as many of their possessions as the jammed vehicle could hold. Ten of them, including five children who appeared to be under 5 years old, were killed on the spot when the high-explosive rounds slammed into their target, Johnson's company reported. Of the five others, one man was so severely injured that medics said he was not expected to live.

"It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen, and I hope I never see it again," Sgt. Mario Manzano, 26, an Army medic with Bravo Company of the division's 3rd Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, said later in an interview. He said one of the wounded women sat in the vehicle holding the mangled bodies of two of her children. "She didn't want to get out of the car," he said.

The tragedy cast a pall over the company as it sat in positions it had occupied Sunday on this key stretch of Highway 9 at the intersection of a road leading to the town of Hilla, about 14 miles to the east, near the Euphrates River. The Toyota was coming from that direction when it was fired on.

Galmin · The King has spoken! Joined: 30 Dec 2001 Posts: 1711

"Warningshot in the forehead"-- it happens.

I heard a trooper on the radio trying to argue that it was the women and childrens own fault that they were killed. :borg

RonOnGuitar · Joined: 08 Jan 2003 Posts: 1916

"I heard a trooper on the radio trying to argue that it was the women and childrens own fault that they were killed."

=======

That is essentially a correct assessment. It is surely sad anytime women and children become casualties of war, but charging a military checkpoint in a bus is probably the fastest way to insure that one becomes a casualty. This could very easily have been prevented if the driver would have stopped.

==Ron==

debbie mannas · Joined: 30 Sep 2002 Posts: 1352

is that the guard fired the warning shot too late and was heard being shouted at by his superior "you killed a family because you fired the warning shot too late"...

Interviewers were asking central command.

Anyway, I wonder what "truth will emerge" after "investigations"

debbie

bbchris

What a sad story. Somebody's daughter, somebody's mother, somebody's sister... A tragic mistake. How many of these mistakes do we NOT hear about?

Galmin · The King has spoken! Joined: 30 Dec 2001 Posts: 1711

Quote:
That is essentially a correct assessment.

Where I come from, no trooper leaves the greens without a successful "Guard B" education. One in our regiment shot [training with blanks and IR tracking] on a guy because "he looked funky" (warningshot in the head and in the back aswell), we never saw that fellow again.

There are strict rules to follow.

debbie mannas · Joined: 30 Sep 2002 Posts: 1352

This same story was in our newspaper, the SCMP today:

"Fire a warning shot," he ordered as the vehicle kept coming. Then, with increasing urgency, he told the platoon to shoot a 7.62mm machine-gun round into its radiator. "Stop [messing] around!" Johnson yelled into the company radio network when he still saw no action being taken. Finally, he shouted at the top of his voice, "Stop him, Red 1, stop him!"

That order was immediately followed by the loud reports of 25mm cannon fire from one or more of the platoon's Bradleys. About half a dozen shots were heard in all.

"Cease fire!" Johnson yelled over the radio. Then, as he peered into his binoculars from the intersection on Highway 9, he roared at the platoon leader, "You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!"

www.washingtonpost.com/wp...Mar31.html

AQUARIAN AGE · Austrian Peacekeeper Joined: 22 Dec 2001 Posts: 612

Reuters

RonOnGuitar · Joined: 08 Jan 2003 Posts: 1916

I was wondering why a busload of civilians would try to crash through an armed checkpoint. The answer? They had no choice in Saddam's Iraq - no sane person would expect to try such a stunt and come out alive:

Driver of van on forced

suicide mission?

Muslim cleric says checkpoint purposely ignored, causing civilian deaths

April 1, 2003

7:24 p.m. Eastern

A Shiite Muslim cleric in Iraq claims the driver of the van at a U.S. checkpoint in which at least seven women and children were killed was forced to disobey the soldiers' orders to stop, thereby causing the civilian deaths, reports Fox News Channel.

Mohammed Barkir Al-Mohari said in a translated videotape that the incident outside Najaf in southern Iraq on Monday was purposely set up to give Saddam's regime grist for criticizing the United States.

After delivering repeated warnings to stop, U.S. soldiers fired on the van, which carried 13 people, according to the Pentagon, when the driver failed to stop as ordered. The military is investigating the incident.

Yesterday, another Iraqi was killed in a similar incident at a checkpoint near the south-central town of Shatra.

''In all cases in checkpoints and otherwise we maintain the right to self-defense,'' Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told reporters while discussing the van incident. ''We've increased vigilance because of the tactics of Iraqi death squads.

''While we regret the loss of civilian lives, they remain unavoidable,'' he said.

''They tried to warn the vehicle to stop; it did not stop,'' Marine Gen. Peter Pace said on PBS. ''And it was unusual that that vehicle would be full of only women and that the driver was a woman. So we need to find out why it was that they were acting the way they did.''

The soldiers involved were from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which lost four soldiers Saturday at another checkpoint when an Iraqi soldier posing as a taxi driver detonated a car bomb in a suicide attack.

Al-Mohari also claims the suicide bomber that struck over the weekend was told if he didn't carry out his mission his family would be killed, and that Saddam's regime gave the man's family hush money.

Fox says Al-Mohari, whom the network describes as an "influential cleric," says families have been threatened with mass killings and even chemical attacks in recent years if they didn't follow through with orders from the Iraqi regime to sacrifice themselves in suicide attacks.

"Those people, children and women, were put in the [van] by Saddam Hussein's forces," Al-Mohari said, "and their husbands and fathers were taken as hostages. And the driver was ordered to speed up at the checkpoint and not stop so that they would be shot at."

worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...E_ID=31829