Wed, Nov 16, 2005 page6

• Baghdad rocked by spate of violent attacks

  TORTURE Two former Iraqi detainees alleged US soldiers threatened to throw them in a cage with a lion during interrogation to force them to 'confess'

  • AFP
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  Nine Iraqi policemen were killed on Monday in a spate of insurgent attacks as the international Red Cross launched an appeal to help hundreds of thousands of Iraqis affected by instability in their country.

  Meanwhile, two former Iraqi detainees alleged that US soldiers threatened to throw them in a cage with a lion during interrogation, adding that they were also given electric shocks and shot with rubber bullets.

  Nine policemen died and nine were wounded in a series of attacks in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk, security officials said.

  

  An Iraqi boy stands among destroyed cars at the site where a car bomb exploded near a restaurant popular with security forces in Baghdad yesterday. Nine policemen were killed and 16 were wounded in a spate of attacks across the battered country.

  PHOTO: AFP

  Three died and three were hurt when a roadside bomb exploded in the northern oil-producing city of Kirkuk, while four more were killed when their patrol car was ambushed by gunmen just east of the town.

  In eastern Baghdad, two policemen died and six were wounded when a car bomb exploded near a restaurant popular with security forces, an interior ministry official said. A passerby was also hurt.

  In other violence, a professor of Arabic literature, Jassem al-Fhidawi, was shot dead outside Baghdad's Mustansiriyah university, a day after another professor and his driver were also killed there, a defense ministry official said.

  And six civilians were wounded by a roadside bomb in the capital's eastern district of Zayunah.

  The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies launched an appeal for money to help 60,000 Iraqi families -- or around 350,000 people -- many of whom are living in poverty, facing food shortages and displaced by conflict.

  "A positive response to this emergency appeal will enable us to continue providing badly needed humanitarian assistance during the winter period to the most vulnerable groups like single parent families, the handicapped, unaccompanied children," Mazin Salloum, head of the Iraqi Red Crescent, said in a statement.

  The UN mission said in a report on human rights that more than 10,000 families have been displaced by ongoing military operations in the western Al-Anbar and northern Nineveh provinces.

  According to World Health Organization reports, doctors were also detained and medical facilities occupied by armed forces in those provinces last month, in contravention with international law.

  LION CAGE TORTURE

  Meanwhile, a US television network broadcast an interview with two former Iraqi detainees, Thahee Sabbar and Sherzad Khalid, who said that they were tortured by US soldiers in July 2003.

  Khalid alleged that US soldiers took him to a cage with a lion and threatened to throw him and others to the lion if they did not "confess," ABC reported.

  US soldiers asked them for information about former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, who was then still on the run.

  "I said to him, `How would I know where Saddam is?' And I thought that he was kidding me. And that's why I laughed. And he beat me again," Khalid said.

  At one point, Sabbar alleged he and other detainees were subjected to a mock execution.

  "They directed their weapons towards us," Sabbar said.

  "And they shot, shot towards our heads and chests. And when the shots sounded, some of us lost consciousness. Some started to cry. Some lost control of their bladders. And they were laughing the whole time," he said.

  The Iraqis said they were released several months later with no charges filed.
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