Hospital in Baghdad militia bastion damaged in US air strike

[maddezmom]

Source: AFP

BAGHDAD (AFP) — A hospital in the Iraqi capital's Sadr City, a Shiite militia stronghold, was damaged in a US air strike on Saturday, wounding around 20 people, medics and witnesses said.

A medic at the Al-Sadr hospital which was hit said women and children were among the 20 wounded in the strike, which a security official said took place at around 10:00 am (0700 GMT).

The US military confirmed the air strike but said it targeted "known criminal elements".

"I can confirm that we conducted a strike in Sadr City this morning. The targets were known criminal elements. Battle damage assessment is currently ongoing," a military spokesman told AFP.



Read more: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hpHder8Vtm7DNWBKVzh9e4q_WlUg

---

The military said it destroyed a "criminal element command and control centre" at approximately 10 am (0700 GMT).

"Intelligence reports indicate the command and control centre was used by criminal elements to plan and coordinate attacks against Iraqi security and coalition forces and innocent Iraqi citizens."

Hospital staff said at least 20 people wounded in the air raid were taken to the same hospital which had its glass windows shattered, and medical and electrical equipment damaged.

Doctors and hospital staff were livid they had been hit.

"They (the Americans) will say it was a weapons cache (they hit)," said the head of Baghdad's health department, Dr Ali Bistan. "But, in fact they want to destroy the infrastructure of the country."

He charged that the attack was aimed at preventing doctors and medicines reaching the hospital which is located inside an area of increased clashes between American troops and militiamen.

more:http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080503/twl-iraq-unrest-us-sadrcity-3cd7efd.html

[dipsydoodle]

1. Winning hearts and minds

as usual.

[SpiralHawk]

2. "Well, at least we didn't bomb a wedding. This time." - Commander AWOL

"Under my Decidership, and that of VP Dickie 'Five Military Deferments' Cheney, you can be sure our Oil Profits Crusade will triumph over every Evil Hospital, and Wedding, on the planet. Smirk."

- Commander AWOL

[lligrd]

3. But They Got The Shack Next Door Too

US rocket attack damages Baghdad hospital - AFP


BAGHDAD (AFP) - A US rocket damaged a hospital in the Iraqi capital's violent Shiite stronghold of Sadr City on Saturday, wounding 28 people as American forces claimed to have killed 14 militants in the district.

The US military said it used a rocket system in an attack on militants in Sadr City that witnesses earlier reported was an air strike.

An AFP reporter at the scene said the district's main Al-Sadr hospital was badly damaged and a fleet of ambulances was destroyed.

Just outside the hospital, a shack which appeared to have been the target was reduced to a pile of rubble.

More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080503/ts_afp/iraqunrestussadrcity_080503150756;_ylt=AitZlzNSwo0.MmsUOEUmO4us0NUE

[Hulk]

4. Does this really matter? We are NOT a nation that follows the Geneva Convention.

Bombing hospitals is nothing. Killing civilians is "collateral damage", and means nothing...unless of course it gets out to the media, but then they ALL back this war anyway.

How many blackwater goons are in prison for shooting and killing 17 civilians at an intersection some time back? ZERO!!

How many soldiers are in prison or waiting on death row for massacring civilians that the Times found out about, when Murtha was shouting to get the f*ck out of Iraq? ZERO!!

We are a nation of goons. Kill the women and children...it doesn't matter. They aren't Americans, right? They are Muslims...sub humans. Blow up those hospitals and churches and homes of civilians. It's "collateral damage", and we honestly don't give a rat's ass how many Muslims we kill and mame, or how many hospitals and mosque's get leveled. We are #1, we are #1, we are #1....

Go America!! Kick their butts, because we have no moral conscience any longer. We have installed an imperialist dictator, and we are ALL shamed by this man and his responsibility to the death and destruction around the world.

Nice going george...you ignorant slut.

[Wizard777]

5. Maybe they should trot out a general to explain to us how they can conduct surgical strikes.

Tell us about how they can bomb a building and destroy specific parts of it. All without harming any other buildings around it.

:banghead:

[coalition_unwilling]

6. Silly DU-ers. The victims weren't children. They were terrorists disguised

as children :sarcasm:

What is now happening in Iraq eerily parallels what took place in southeast Asia post-1968 Tet. As the U.S. committed to Nix-con's policy of "Vietnamization" of the war that saw most U.S. ground combat forces withdrawn, the U.S. and its puppets in the South ramped up the air war. More tonnage was dropped on South Vietnam from 1969-1974 than was dropped on North Vietnam and Vietnamese civilian casualties sky-rocketed, even as U.S. casualties steadily declined.

Sound familiar? Can you say "Surge"?

The most ominious parallel is yet to be played out but remains waiting in the wings. In 1968, Nix-con campaigned that he had a 'secret plan' to end the Vietnam War "with honor" (whatever that means). Turns out Nix-con's secret plan was to expand the air and ground war to Laos and Cambodia.

Sound familiar? Can you say "Iran"?

Karl Marx wrote that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. I doubt many Iraqi civilians would agree with Marx's prescription.

[SpikeTss]

7. Mission Accomplished!

Congratulations to the heroes who dropped these deadly toys from their high flying murder machines on patients, nurses, doctors, mothers and children. Let's quote a war criminal, who happens to be the father of another war criminal and vicious mass murderer:

By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all

Yeah! Yeah?!

[cbayer]

8. How can we not have a candidate that has a plan to stop this immediately?

Why are we not holding our candidate's collective feet to the fire and demanding that they present a plan for withdrawal?

[Hissyspit]

9. U.S. Rocket Attack Damages Baghdad Hospital

Source: AFP

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A US rocket attack damaged a hospital in the Iraqi capital's violent Shiite stronghold of Sadr City on Saturday, wounding 28 people as American forces claimed to have killed 14 militants in the district.

The US military said it used a rocket system in an attack on militants in Sadr City that witnesses earlier reported was an air strike.

An AFP reporter at the scene said the district's main Al-Sadr hospital was badly damaged and a fleet of ambulances was destroyed.

Just outside the hospital, a shack which appeared to have been the target was reduced to a pile of rubble.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080503/wl_afp/iraqunrestussadrcity_080503175855

[stellanoir]

10. Those injured children and elderly people are undoubtedly insurgents

We will pay for this in many ways.

[Hulk]

11. We are #1, we are #1, we are #1.....

We are #1, we are #1, we are #1, we are #1, we are #1, we are #1, we are #1, we are #1, we are #1, we are #1, we are #1, we are #1, we are #1...just keep saying it. Nobody believes it but YOU!!!...idiots!

Not only have we lost our "moral compass", but we don't even know the meaning of the word "morals". Shame on us.

[SpikeTss]

12. These are deliberate attacks on the Iraqi medical infrastructure

And they are conducted since the beginning of the war of aggression against Iraq:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3988433.stm

US strikes raze Falluja hospital

A hospital has been razed to the ground in one of the heaviest US air raids in the Iraqi city of Falluja.

Witnesses said only the facade remained of the small Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the centre of the city. There are no reports on casualties.

A nearby medical supplies storeroom and dozens of houses were damaged as US forces continued preparing the ground for an expected major assault.

UN chief Kofi Annan has warned against an attack on the restive Sunni city.

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/iraq/000157.php

U.S. Military Obstructing Medical Care

BAGHDAD, Dec 13 (IPS) - The U.S. military has been preventing delivery of medical care in several instances, medical staff say.

Iraqi doctors at many hospitals have reported raids by coalition forces. Some of the more recent raids have been in Amiriyat al-Fallujah, about 10km to the east of Fallujah, the town to which U.S. forces have laid bloody siege. Amiriyat al-Fallujah has been the source of several reported resistance attacks on U.S. forces.

The main hospital in Amiriyat al-Fallujah was raided twice recently by U.S. soldiers and members of the Iraqi National Guard, doctors say. ”The first time was November 29 at 5:40am, and the second time was the following day,” said a doctor at the hospital who did not want to give his real name for fear of U.S. reprisals

...

Another doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that all of the doors of the clinics inside the hospital were kicked in. All of the doctors, along with the security guard were handcuffed and interrogated for several hours, he said.

The two doctors pointed to an ambulance with a shattered back window. ”When the Americans raided our hospital again last Tuesday at 7pm, they smashed one of our ambulances,” the first doctor said.

His colleague pointed to other bullet-riddled ambulances. ”The Americans have snipers all along the road between here and Fallujah,” he said. ”They are shooting our ambulances if they try to go to Fallujah.”

In nearby Saqlawiyah, Dr Abdulla Aziz told IPS that occupation forces had blocked any medical supplies from entering or leaving the city. ”They won't let any of our ambulances go to help Fallujah,” he said. ”We are out of supplies and they won't let anyone bring us more.”

The pattern of military interference in medical work has apparently persisted for many months. During the April siege of Fallujah, doctors there reported similar difficulties.

”The marines have said they didn't close the hospital, but essentially they did,” said Dr. Abdul Jabbar, orthopedic surgeon at Fallujah General Hospital. ”They closed the bridge which connects us to the city, and closed our road. The area in front of our hospital was full of their soldiers and vehicles.”

This prevented medical care reaching countless patients in desperate need, he said. ”Who knows how many of them died that we could have saved.”

[ohio2007]

13. US strike takes out militant holdout in Baghdad ( 55 yards away from a hospital )

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military fired guided missiles into the heart of Baghdad's teeming Sadr City slum on Saturday, leveling a building 55 yards away from a hospital and wounding nearly two dozen people
snip
AP Television News footage from Sadr City showed several ambulances destroyed and on fire, thick black smoke rising from them as firefighters worked to put out the flames.

The strike, made from a ground launcher, took out a militant "command-control center," the U.S. military said. The center was located in the heart of the eight-square-mile neighborhood that is home to about 2.5 million people. Iraqi officials said at least 23 people were wounded, though none of them were patients in the hospital.

The U.S. military blamed the militants for using Iraqi civilians as human shields.


snip

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080504/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_080501193834

Wonder how long this reporter ;

UK journalist Hala Jaber runs as she comes under fire in Sadr City

will be allowed to report Mahdi troop movements before they shoot her for passing on the wrong information? ( ie, do the mahdi use hospitals as operating areas ) I would like to hear more truth from all fighting sides for a change.






Mahdi Army fighters grateful for sand storm standstills in Sadr City



Hooded Mahdi Army fighters loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr hold their weapons as they take up position in a street in Basra


snip

The Iraqi army may have the superior fire-power but Mahdi commanders were eager to show off their own arsenal. Seven of them gathered in a single-storey concrete house to display weapons ranging from mainly American-made guns, including M16 and M18 rifles, to homemade roadside bombs known as raaed, or thunder.

“Our bombs are not Iranian-made – they are produced locally,” said one commander. “Any Mahdi fighter can put one together.”

The plastic cylinders packed with gunpowder, TNT and C4 explosives came in four sizes, he explained: 5kg and 15kg for use against small military vehicles, and 25kg and 50kg against armoured personnel carriers.

Another commander, who gave his name as Abu Ahmad, was limping from an injury sustained one week into the battle when his unit set an American tank on fire, only to be wiped out by a helicopter gunship.



snip

Whether Sadr or Maliki will order an escalation of the conflict in the days ahead depends on efforts to secure a resolution.

Sadr is understood to believe that his rival has set out to destroy his power bases in Baghdad and Basra to ensure that he is a spent force before local elections in the autumn. He is resisting demands by Maliki for 500 named Mahdi “criminals” to be handed over. In turn, Sadr is demanding that the Iraqi army stay out of Sadr City indefinitely.

The negotiations hang in the balance but one thing is certain: if the two Shi’ite leaders fail to resolve their differences, it is the civilians of Sadr City who will suffer for it.

At Sadr general hospital last week, Amira Zaydan was by no means the only woman mourning her family. Beside her sat her neighbour Um Aseel Ali, who had lost her husband and three boys, aged six, four and two, when their house was blown up by a rocket.


snip

A spokesman for the US military, which has lost at least nine men in Sadr City, said a vehicle carrying an injured soldier had been hit by two roadside bombs, gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades, and at least 28 “extremists” had died in subsequent fighting. He said there had been no American air strikes that day but US ground forces had fired rockets at “militants firing from buildings, alleyways and roof-tops”. “We have every right to defend ourselves,” he added.

Witnesses in Sadr City, however, told of a second multiple rocket attack on four houses on the same afternoon in which at least five civilians died.


snip
“I blame Maliki and his government and all those who are sitting in power and letting this happen,” she said



http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article3868043.ece


I didn't read anything in the article about the journalist asking the doctors questions.


An injured boy gets treatment at the Sadr General Hospital


Vehicles damaged during the bombing in Sadr City



Fear in Sadr City as cleric threatens war
April 21, 2008

At the southern entrance to Sadr City several Iraqi men on the US military’s payroll are sweeping the street in the latest attempt to stop al-Mahdi Army militia from recruiting new fighters.

The number of people working on such US-funded projects is tiny, however, because Shia militants loyal to the anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have ordered many in this Baghdad slum to stay away.

snip

The escalation of fighting has brought despair for many civilians, who complain that they are tired of being trapped in the firing line. “We in Sadr City are in a very bad situation,” Ahmad Jafaar, 33, a labourer, said. “The Iraqi and US forces can’t distinguish between the civilians and fighters. We are stuck in hell between two fires.” He said that there was “no food, no water, no power,

no medicines”.
snip
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3785041.ece





.......
....“I blame Maliki and his government and all those who are sitting in power and letting this happen,” she said.....
......



Let the Iraqi people decide when they cast their votes in October as to where the blame ends and change starts.



I hope the turnout will be higher then the voter turnouts in our own primaries have become.
People in the US are starting to accept responsibility in making decisions as opposed to the status quo voter apathy of the past decades.

[Bush_MUST_Go]

14. Dubya's out Saddaming Saddam. Way to go bush admin.

[Doctor_J]

15. I bet a vast majority of Iraqis would rather have Saddam back

All of *'s disasters of the first 50 years of his life don't even come close to this one.