|
Recent
Stories
April
7, 2003
Diane
Christian
A Scene from an Obscene War
Patrick
Cockburn
Slaughter on the Road to Dibagah
April
5, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Iraqi Humanitarian Relief is
in Shambles
Anne
Gwynne
A Drowning in Salem
Uri
Avnery
Roadmap to Nowhere
Chris
Floyd
Hell for Leather: Bombs, Bullets, Bibles and Bush
William
Cook
Would You Have Sent Your Son (or Daughter) Off to War If...
Gila
Svirsky
A Busy Day for Bulldozers
Mike Ferner
Back from Baghdad: What Next for the Peace Movement?
Joanne
Mariner
Civilian Deaths and Official Apologies
John Stanton
Bush Takes His Killing Orders
from the Lord
Romi
Mahajan
Learning to Count the Dead
Aluf Benn
After Iraq, US Vows to Deal with
Other Mideast Regimes
Mary
Ellen Peterson
Gay Marine Refuses to Fight
William
MacDougall
Country Music and the Crimes of Patriotism
Ron
Jacobs
War and Occupation
Bernie
Pattison
Aborigines and the Different God
Mark
Engler
Iraq War as Arms Expo
Adam Engel
Li'l Box of Love: a Novelini
Poets'
Basement
Tripp, Albert, Katz
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Flesh and Its Discontents: the Paintings of Lucian Freud
Norman
Madarasz
Canada and the War
April
4, 2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell's Shame
John
Chuckman
Was Einstein Right About Israel?
David
Krieger
The Meaning of Victory
Tom
Gorman
The Mantra of the Troops: Support
or Treason?
Adam
Federman
The Absence of War
Vijay
Prashad
There Are No More Arguments
Tom
Stephens
The End of the Innocence
Mickey
Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing
Bush Speak
Pierre
Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality
Show
Hammond
Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/04
April
3, 2003
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
the Theater of Operations
David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
to Fight
Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
Burn Your Sweatshop Clothes!
Buy Union Made Apparel!
|
April 7,
2003
Slaughter on the Road
to Dibagah
US
Pilot Kills 18 in Kurdish Convoy
By PATRICK COCKBURN
Northern Iraq.
In the worst friendly fire incident of the war
so far, two US F-15 bombers killed 17 Kurdish and American soldiers
and a BBC translator yesterday when they mistakenly attacked
an Allied convoy in northern Iraq.
The explosions ripped apart the vehicles,
the heat of the blast so intense that it melted the zinc of their
batteries. The bombs killed or wounded most of the Kurds and
Americans travelling towards the front line near the village
of Dibagah. John Simpson, the BBC world affairs editor, travelling
in the convoy, said just after the bombs had struck: "This
is a scene from hell. All the vehicles are on fire. There are
bodies burning around me, there are bodies lying around, there
are bits of bodies on the ground. This is a bad own goal by the
Americans." A piece of shrapnel cut off the legs of Kamran
Abdurazaq Mohammed, a BBC  translator, who bled to death before
he could be brought to hospital. Mr Simpson was slightly wounded
in the leg. The bombs also critically wounded Wajy Barzani, brother
of the Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani and the commander of the
Kurdish special forces, who was flown to a hospital in Germany.
Grief-stricken Kurds besieged the hospital in the Kurdish capital,
Arbil, where some 45 wounded have been taken.
The slaughter on the road above Dibagah
will reinforce doubts about the ability of US pilots and ground
controllers to accurately identify targets on the ground in a
war in which the Iraqi authorities say 1,253 civilians have been
killed, almost all by bombs and missiles.
The disaster happened on the top of a
bare ridge above Dibagah from which the Iraqi army had just withdrawn
at 12.30pm yesterday. Kurdish soldiers known as peshmerga and
US special forces were advancing to cut the road between Kirkuk
and Mosul supported by an intense bombardment by US planes overhead.
The convoy stopped at a point on the
ridge from which one can see the plain below through a dusty
haze. A US special forces commander apparently saw an Iraqi tank
firing about a mile away. He called for an air strike.
About 50 yards from where the convoy
was destroyed, I could see an elderly Soviet-made T-54 tank lying
abandoned in a deep ditch beside the road. The American pilot
may have thought this was the target he was meant to attack.
The bombs gave the Kurds and Americans, who were sitting in or
standing around their vehicles, little chance. Every piece of
metal was pierced by shrapnel and the roof of one vehicle had
been blown 50 yards down the road. There were dried pools of
blood on the road where it had not been blackened by the scorch
marks of the explosion.
Yesterday marked the opening of a concerted
Kurdish and American offensive up and down the front in northern
Iraq. The bombing, the sound resounding off the mountains, was
much heavier than I have heard since the start of the war. The
offensive at Dibagah, about 20 miles south of Arbil, the Kurdish
capital, was to cut off Mosul from Kirkuk and capture part of
the the ridge which overlooks the Kirkuk oilfields.
It is often very difficult to tell exactly
where the front line is and the peshmerga sometimes have only
have a hazy idea of how close they are to the enemy. Earlier
in the day, I was driving down a long, straight road north near
the village of Dubardan, noting nervously that a peshmerga outpost
I had seen the day before was no longer there and hoping the
Kurdish soldiers had gone forward rather than backwards. I also
wondered how the pilots of the US planes we could hear overhead
could possibly understand the complex jigsaw puzzle on the ground,
with some positions captured and recaptured in hours. American
special forces are now operating more openly and in greater numbers
with the Kurds than at any time before. Small-arms fighting is
limited and the peshmerga are generally advancing to take over
Iraqi positions that have been abandoned after heavy air strikes,
their artillery and tanks destroyed.
But the US and the Kurdish leadership
are also very nervous that an all-out ground offensive by the
Kurds could provoke a Turkish invasion. The peshmerga sometimes
suddenly withdraw on orders from above, often to the chagrin
of their own men. Last week Wajy Barzani, critically wounded
yesterday, was at the front angrily telling his men not to attack
until told to do so.
The Iraqi army shows signs of beginning
to disintegrate in the north, though it may fight for the cities
of Mosul and Kirkuk, which are full of troops and strong points.
Near Dibagah, Makdid Mohammed Ali, a Kurdish commander with a
sniper's rifle strapped to his back, said: "There was little
Iraqi resistance. They have pulled back to a mountain further
south." The driver of the ageing T-54 abandoned beside the
burnt-out Kurdish and American convoy had evidently decided it
was an unequal contest and gone home.
The Kurds have an incentive to press
forward as far and as fast as the US will let them. The areas
into which they are advancing were previously largely inhabited
by Kurds. They were ethnically cleansed over the past 30 years
by Saddam Hussein and many are now returning to land where their
fathers and grandfathers lived but which they have never seen.
Each day, they are closer to their families' former homes.
Yesterday's
Features
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell's Shame
John
Chuckman
Was Einstein Right About Israel?
David
Krieger
The Meaning of Victory
Tom
Gorman
The Mantra of the Troops: Support
or Treason?
Adam
Federman
The Absence of War
Vijay
Prashad
There Are No More Arguments
Tom
Stephens
The End of the Innocence
Mickey
Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing
Bush Speak
Pierre
Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality
Show
Hammond
Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/04
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|