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April
1, 2003
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April 3,
2003
Cluster Bombs
on Babylon
Inside Babylon
General Hospital
By ANTON ANTONOWICZ
Babylon, Iraq.
They lie in packed wards, eight to each airless
room. Many are crying. Others softly moaning. Some stare, as
if lifeless.
These are the survivors of what are claimed
to be cluster bomb attacks on villages in Babylon and its capital
Al Hillah, some 70 miles south of Baghdad.
The attacks, which happened around lunchtime
on Monday, are said to have killed at least 60 people and injured
a further 250. But no one has completed the tally.
I see six bodies in the makeshift morgue,
a crude metal box teeming with flies, situated beneath an awning
at Babylon General Hospital.
There are scores of slightly injured
patients hobbling through the grounds. Beds are laid in the entrance,
every space being exploited. But it is upstairs on those wards
that the suffering scream.
Among the 168 patients I counted, not
one was being treated for bullet wounds. All of them, men, women,
children, bore the wounds of bomb shrapnel. It peppered their
bodies. Blackened the skin. Smashed heads. Tore limbs.
Two sisters, Khoda, five, and Mariam
Nasser, aged 10, share the same bed. Khoda is crying when I approach.
Her mother is trying to re-dress the wounds to her forehead and
the back of her skull. Mariam sits there saying nothing, a dressing
over her left shoulder, cuts all over her back and one eye bloodied.
They had been playing in the garden of their home, 15 miles from
Al Hillah, when the bombs went off.
Goran Ali, three, has a huge blood-blister
beneath one eye. His little body is a mess of tubes. His mother
Zubeida just looks at me shaking her head at the madness of it
all.
Kifel Hassan, 13, tries to tell me what
happened when the explosions struck but the effort made in pointing
to his mother, his brother and sister, all lying injured alongside
him, proves too much. He lowers his bandaged arm. He has lost
his hand.
Sejad Ali is five and lies alone. His
three brothers were killed. His parents are burying them as I
look upon this lad with wounds all over his body.
Khalid Hallil, 21, was inside his house
three miles from the centre. His left thigh is torn from knee
to crotch. His father Hamid speaks English: "Metal just
came from everywhere. Believe me, there were no soldiers in the
area. Only civilians. There was no reason for attacking us in
our homes. No justification for this murderous act.
"Tell your countrymen what is happening.
Let them see with their eyes instead of listening to Tony Blair's
lying words. Look, this is reality-- not the make-believe world
of Bush and Blair."
Ali Abed bends to kiss his injured son
Hussein. Ali tells me his wife died in the attack. He is all
that's left for his four-year-old boy.
Azor Abdul Waled, 20, holds her seven-month-old
daughter Zena, her head swathed in bandages. Two other daughters
have died. Her own right leg is gashed. She comes from the village
of Al-Ameinera, six miles south. And she tells me a different
story.
Azor says that US soldiers had tried
to land in the village outskirts by helicopter but that local
militia and tribesmen had sent up a hail of fire which had seen
off the three twin-prop transporters.
Then, some 10 minutes later, fighters
screamed out of the sky, delivering their fatal payloads.
"All the injuries you see were caused
by cluster bombs," Dr Hydar Abbas tells me. "Most of
the people came from the southern and western periphery. The
majority of the victims were children who died because they were
outside.
"We have an ambulance driver, Abdul
Zahra, whose leg has had to be amputated after he came under
attack while he was driving to the area.
"What kind of war is it that you
and America are fighting? Do you really think that you will be
supported by the Iraqi people if you win? Do you think we will
all forget this and say it was for our own good?
"This war is building a hatred which
will grow and grow against you. I have no anger for the British
people. But one day, I fear they will suffer for this just as
we do now."
I find another ambulance driver, Hassan
Ali, 37, and ask him what happened two days ago. He said he was
racing to the scene of the first attack when cluster bombs erupted
around him, cutting his tyres to shreds.
"I turned around and slowly drove
back to shelter," he says. "Even in that short space,
I saw so many injured. Some dead. Animals--dogs, cattle, sheep--lying
all over." He adds that there are reports that a bus containing
35 people had been hit by a tank or artillery shell. But I cannot
obtain confirmation.
It is getting on for 1pm, about the time
that those bombs fell, and the minders want us back aboard the
bus for the 65-minute journey to Baghdad. There is no time to
make polite farewells to the injured. They are abruptly left
to their misery...
On the way back, a guide proudly announces
that we are crossing the River of Babylon, a tributary of the
Euphrates. In the distance, through the date palm groves, lies
the ancient city, named after the river.
Here, I can see the resistance with my
own eyes. The troops digging in. The field guns and tanks hidden
in the trees. The lorries parked in ditches. The machine-gun
nests. It would be wrong to say it's an iron ring. The defences
are patchy but, nevertheless, there is a significant presence.
Yet the closer we come to Baghdad, the
less evidence there is of soldiery --a few emplacements but nothing
obvious. The guides prevent filming. Suddenly, over to the south-west
of the capital and about six miles from our hotel--we see an
enormous angry cloud. It is too light to be one of Saddam's oil
fires. It must be a bomb.
Its shape and colour then changes, with
blacker smoke coming from its heart. Huge balls of fire lick
and spit into the sky.
It didn't look as if the local refinery
had been hit. This looked as though the bombs had found a fuel
dump--and an enormous one at that.
"No pictures!" yells the guide.
None are taken but everything is seen.
It is only then that you notice how dark
the sky is over the capital and how polluted the air is.
At Babylon, the sky was blue and cloudless.
Here, on the edge of the city, its true colour is masked by smoke
which is dark, low and cruel. That is the space in which five
million Iraqis are forced to live.
Not that there are five million here
any more. Most have moved elsewhere. Drivers in the hotel make
constant phone calls to loved ones and return with tears in their
eyes. They have to make a living and it's a lonely one now their
families have gone.
The Information Minister, Mohammed Sayeed
al-Sahaf, gives us an afternoon update, saying 10 people were
killed and 90 wounded overnight in Baghdad.
He also accused the Americans of dropping
booby-traps--shaped like ballpoint-pens--to maim anyone picking
them up.
During fighting on Tuesday and into yesterday
morning, Iraqi troops had destroyed two Apache helicopters, nine
tanks and 26 armoured personnel carriers.
"We have again inflicted heavy casualties
on the mercenary enemy," he says.
He scoffs at reports that the US and
Britain have made substantial gains.
"They claim to have taken Karbala.
Well, this morning I sent an Iraqi TV team to record what's really
happening there and all the world will see it.
"I also had a detailed briefing
from the Governor there, who said that what the Pentagon is saying
is an illusion, all lies.
"They claim to have inflicted heavy
losses on our soldiers. Believe me, the impact on our capacities
is trivial--trivial."
He then went on to complain that enemy
fighters were deliberately flying low over the ancient Shiite
shrines in Kerbala and Najaf, attempting to wreck them. These
magnificent tombs are the most sacred in Shiism. Any desecration
would inflame the largely Shiite Iraqi population, not to mention
the 65million faithful in neighbouring Iran.
Whether the claim is true or false, it
is easy to see its value in the propaganda war.
"Deeds not words. That is what is
important," the Minister is saying...
Deeds not words. Visible deeds which
result in so many lying in Babylon Hospital. Visible deeds such
as that fireball rising before us on the way home.
Invisible ones, like so much battleground
bravery. Or the moment that high-flying pilot's finger presses
the button. All deeds which matter.
While words are tossed around like shrapnel.
Anton Antonowicz
is reporting on the war for The Mirror, where this dispatch originally
appeared.
Today's
Features
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
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