A heart-wrenching article reveals the horrific realities of the war, any war...

Published on April 3, 2003 in the South China Morning Post.

Thursday, April 3, 2003

Civilian victims were seeking US help

MEG LAUGHLIN of Knight Ridder near Najaf and AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in Washington

An Iraqi family that lost 11 members when US soldiers opened fire on their van were fleeing towards US lines on the advice of US leaflets, according to a survivor.

Bakhat Hassan lost his daughters, aged two and five, his three-year-old son, his parents, two older brothers, their wives and two nieces, aged 12 and 15, in the incident on Monday. He said US soldiers at an earlier checkpoint had waved them through as they drove away from their home village.

As they approached another checkpoint 40 km south of Karbala, they waved again at the American soldiers.

"We were thinking these Americans want us to be safe," Mr Hassan said.

The soldiers didn't wave back. They fired.

"I saw the heads of my two little girls come off," Mr Hassan's wife, Lamea, 36, recalled numbly. "My girls . . . my son is dead."

US officials originally gave the death toll as seven in the incident, and reporters at the scene placed it at 10. But Mr Hassan's father died later at a US army hospital near Najaf.

American officials said the soldiers who opened fire were following orders not to let vehicles approach checkpoints. On Saturday, a suicide bomber killed four US soldiers outside Najaf.

The survivors tell a distressing tale, of a family fleeing towards what they thought would be safety, tragically misunderstanding instructions.

"A miscommunication with civilians," said an army report written on Monday night.

Mr Hassan's father, in his 60s, wore his best clothes for the trip through the American lines: a pinstriped suit. Mr Hassan said: "To look American."

Mr Hassan, his wife and another of his brothers are in intensive care at the military hospital. Another brother, sister-in-law and a seven-year-old child were released to bury the dead.

The Shi'ite family of 17 was packed in its 1974 Land Rover, so crowded that Mr Hassan, 35, was outside on the rear bumper hanging on to the back door.

Everyone else was piled on one another's laps in three sets of seats. They were fleeing their farm town southeast of Karbala, where US attack helicopters had fired missiles and rockets the day before.

Helicopters also had dropped leaflets on the town: a drawing of a family sitting at a table eating and smiling with a message written in Arabic.

Sergeant Stephen Furbush, an army intelligence analyst, said the message read: "To be safe, stay put."

But Mr Hassan said he and his father thought it just said: "Be safe." To them, that meant getting away from the helicopters.

His father drove. They planned to go to Karbala. They stopped at an army checkpoint on the northbound road near Sahara, south of Karbala, and were told to go on, Mr Hassan said.

But the Iraqi family "misunderstood" what the soldiers were saying, Sergeant Furbush said.

A few kilometres later, a Bradley fighting vehicle came into view. The family waved as it came closer. The soldiers opened fire.

Mr Hassan remembers an army medic at the scene of the killings speaking Arabic.

"He told us it was a mistake and the soldiers were sorry," Mr Hassan said.

"They believed it was a van of suicide bombers," Sergeant Furbush said.

Soldiers in the region have been jittery following alleged "false surrenders" by Iraqis who have then opened fire.

Brigadier General Vincent Brooks of the US Central Command in Qatar also expressed regret, but added that civilian deaths "remain unavoidable".

President George W. Bush, through a spokesman, expressed similar sentiments to the top US military officer.

"The president always regrets any innocent loss of life. And he recognises that most innocents have been lost in this war at the hands of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

"That's who is to blame for the loss of innocent lives."

But Mr Fleischer declined to comment specifically on the killings, which a European Union spokesman described as "a horrible and tragic incident".

Mr Hassan, his wife, his father and a brother were airlifted to the army hospital. Three doctors and three nurses worked on the father for four hours. His right hand and right leg were amputated by a plastic surgeon.

A cardio-thoracic surgeon operated on his chest, and an internist repaired a hole in his colon. But his heart stopped and they couldn't restart it.

"We didn't know who he was and we didn't care. We just wanted to save him," said John Cho, the cardio-thoracic surgeon who worked on the father.

On Tuesday, Mr Hassan and his wife were in beds next to each other in the green hospital tent in the desert. He had staples in his head. She had a mangled hand and shrapnel in her face.

Major Scott McDannold, an anaesthesiologist, said Mr Hassan's brother, five beds down, would not make it.

Major McDannold stayed up all night on Monday with the brother, who is on a respirator with a broken neck.

Mr Hassan, a poor farmer, and his wife, who is nine months pregnant, rarely speak or sleep. They lie in their drab green beds with open, dead eyes.