|
Us gunships fire on militia in karbala { May 21 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=28864http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=28864
U.S. gunships fire on militia in Karbala
By Associated Press
Friday, May 21, 2004
KARBALA, Iraq - American AC-130 gunships and tanks battled militiamen near shrines in this Shiite holy city Friday, and fighting was heavy in two other towns south of Baghdad. More than 450 Iraqis were released from the notorious Abu Ghraib jail - some emerging with fresh claims of abuse.
Meanwhile, four people were detained in Baghdad on Wednesday in the killing of Nicholas Berg, the 26-year-old American whose beheading was captured on videotape, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. Two of them were released after questioning, he said.
An Iraqi security official also said four people were arrested in the case, but he appeared to be referring to a different group of detainees that he said was led by a relative of Saddam Hussein.
American officials have previously said they believe Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian wanted for allegedly organizing attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq on behalf of al-Qaida, personally carried out Berg's decapitation. Footage of Berg's killing was posted on an al-Qaeda-linked Web site.
Also Friday, the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council condemned the raids on the home and offices of Ahmad Chalabi, a council member once groomed by the Pentagon as a possible replacement for Saddam but who has since fallen out of favor with the Bush administration. Chalabi spokesman Entifadh Qanbar said Chalabi and two other council members offered their resignations but that the council rejected them.
It was unclear why Chalabi's home was raided Thursday. A senior coalition official said an Iraqi judge had issued several warrants, and details would be released later.
With anger at the U.S.-led coalition rising, Associated Press Television News footage of a U.S. attack that survivors said hit a wedding party, killing up to 45 people Wednesday, arrived in Baghdad.
It showed pieces of rockets, bullet shellings, pots and pans, destroyed musical instruments, pillows, mattresses and blankets scattered at the devastated site. Tufts of women's hair and bits of what appear to be human flesh lie in a shallow ditch. An arm lies in the rubble. A crowd of young men stand around a huge blood stain on the ground.
The United States has insisted the target was a safehouse for infiltrators slipping across the border to fight coalition soldiers in Iraq. In Baghdad, Kimmitt repeated that claim Thursday, but said the U.S. military would investigate after Iraqi officials reported the survivors' story.
In Karbala, the U.S. military said it killed 18 fighters loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who launched an uprising against the American-led coalition in early April and is wanted in the murder of a rival moderate cleric last year. Hospital officials reported 12 deaths, including two Iranian pilgrims. A driver for the Arab television network Al-Jazeera was also killed.
Much of the fighting in Karbala was near the city's Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas shrines, which U.S. forces say are being used by militiamen as firing positions or protective cover.
At least six people were killed and 56 were injured in fighting in Najaf and neighboring Kufa, where al-Sadr delivered a defiant sermon to 15,000 worshippers in which he urged his supporters to resist the coalition.
At a checkpoint in Kufa, American forces shot at a car carrying a close aide of al-Sadr, Mohammed al-Tabtabaei, injuring him and killing his driver, al-Sadr's office in Najaf said. Al-Tabtabaei was taken into custody.
The U.S. military said 454 prisoners were released Friday from the Abu Ghraib prison on the western outskirts of Baghdad. Between 3,000 and 4,000 people are still believed held at the prison. The military is still sending detainees considered security risks to Abu Ghraib.
A convoy of at least six buses, accompanied by U.S. troops in armored vehicles and jeeps, took detainees to several areas, including Tikrit and Baqouba, north of the capital.
The release came as new photographs and shots from a video of alleged abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners were published in The Washington Post's Friday editions. The newspaper reported that some prisoners at Abu Ghraib were ridden like animals, fondled by female soldiers, forced to curse their religion and required to retrieve their food from toilets.
The newspaper said the material, including secret sworn statements from prisoners, came from evidence being assembled from investigations into possible criminal charges against U.S. soldiers.
The first American accused in the scandal, Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, was sentenced Wednesday to a year in prison for sexually humiliating detainees and taking a photo of prisoners stacked naked in a human pyramid.
Some of those who freed Friday told of beatings and psychological abuse. They kissed the ground and kneeled to pray after walking out of the police compound in Baqouba.
Abdul Salam Hussain Jassim, 18, said he was held for three months after an explosion.
"Don't even talk about torture. They destroyed me," Jassim said. He said a family of five brothers and sisters was detained in the same block and that one of the men was beaten so badly he died two days later.
Maher Saeed said he was tied to a car and dragged through the sand for several hundred yards.
A man who identified himself as Ghazwan said he was held with his brother and father for nine months. He spent six in isolation.
"They were psychologically torturing us especially in the heavy quarantines, they were abusing us inside these quarantines by beating us and forcing us to take off all our clothes," he said. "They were forcing detained women to distribute food to us while we were naked."
The military periodically frees prisoners from Abu Ghraib, which was also notorious as the site of executions and torture during Saddam Hussein's regime.
The Iraqi security official who divulged information about the Berg case said Iraqi police on May 14 arrested four suspects - all former members of Saddam's Fedayeen paramilitary organization - in a raid in Salaheddin province, north of Baghdad. The group was led by Yasser al-Sabawi, a Saddam nephew who was not among those captured, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Another Iraqi official, who also declined to be named, confirmed the arrests.
Berg, of West Chester, Pa., was in Iraq seeking business for his communications company. His body was found May 8 near a highway overpass in Baghdad. He was last seen April 10 when he left his Baghdad hotel.
Kimmitt said coalition forces on Wednesday captured four people suspected of involvement in Berg's killing, and were still questioning the two still in custody.
"I don't know their prior affiliations or prior organizations," he said. "We have some intelligence that would suggest they have knowledge, perhaps some culpability."
( © Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. )
|
|
