US forces killed dozens of people in Iraq's western desert, the army said yesterday, but reports the victims were civilians at a wedding sparked outrage as Washington struggled to contain a prisoner-abuse scandal.
US General John Abizaid, who oversees military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, predicted a surge in violence after June 30 and until Iraqi polls at year's end.
PHOTO: EPA/ABC
Abizaid said on Wednesday mistreatment was more extensive than previously acknowledged. He told the Senate hearing the military had investigated 75 cases of abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan since late 2002 but no "culture of abuse existed."
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the US military in Iraq, said the attack early Wednesday targeted "a suspected foreign fighter safe house" near the Syrian border.
But Dubai-based Al Arabiya television, quoting eyewitnesses, said the raid on the village of Makr al-Deeb had hit wedding guests and had killed at least 41 civilians.
It quoted a villager denying there had been any celebratory gunfire, a tradition that has caused fatal misunderstandings before in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"At 3am we conducted an operation ... against suspected foreign fighters in a safe house," Kimmitt said. Asked about reports of dozens killed, he said: "We are not disputing the numbers you are hearing. We estimate that around 40 were killed. But we operated within our rules of engagement."
Washington says the violence in Iraq will not delay its handing sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30.
US President George W. Bush said an interim Iraqi president, prime minister and other top ministers should be selected in the next two weeks.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi asked assurances from Bush that Iraqis would take over their own affairs. US officials said security forces would remain un-der US command.
Al Arabiya showed pictures of several shrouded bodies lined up on a dirt road. Men were shown digging graves and lowering bod-ies, one of a child, into the pits while relatives wept.
"We received about 40 martyrs today, mainly women and children below the age of 12," Hamdy al-Lousy, the director of Qaim hospital, told Al Arabiya. "We also have 11 people wounded, most of them in critical condition."
An unidentified man said he was from the village and that there had been an air strike as residents celebrated a wedding.
"They hit two homes where the wedding was being held and then they levelled the whole village," he said. "No bullets were fired by us, nothing was happening."
The US military has already faced international outrage this month after photographs emerged showing American soldiers abusing Iraqis held at Baghdad's notor-ious Abu Ghraib prison.
US military policeman Jeremy Sivits, 24, was jailed for a year on Wednesday and discharged from the army for bad conduct after he admitted sexually humiliating prisoners in the first court martial of soldiers connected to the case.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in