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4000 volunteers suicide attacks { March 31 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/31/international/worldspecial/31BAGH.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/31/international/worldspecial/31BAGH.html
March 31, 2003
Iraqi General Says 4,000 Volunteered for Suicide Attacks
By JOHN F. BURNS
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 30 — Gen. Hazem al-Rawi, a spokesman for the Iraqi armed forces, said today that 4,000 volunteers from 23 Arab countries stand ready to carry out suicide attacks against American forces.
Citing Ali Hammadi al-Namani, the soldier identified by the Baghdad government as the man who carried out a suicide bombing on Saturday that killed four American soldiers, General Rawi said the volunteers would follow the soldier's example.
"They have pledged never to return to their homelands, insisting that they remain in Iraq after their martyrdom," he said. "It is our duty to chase the invaders from Iraq at any price."
Within hours of the suicide attack on the outskirts of Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, President Saddam Hussein awarded the Iraqi soldier two posthumous medals, vowing that "battalions" of Iraqi and other Arab volunteers were poised to replicate the attack.
In the second week of the American war in Iraq, fears are growing of a wave of suicide bombings and guerrilla attacks on American forces, who boast far superior weaponry and technology but remain vulnerable to fanaticism. Charges and countercharges of war crimes are intensifying.
The Iraqis have invoked the heavy American bombing of Baghdad and other cities, and have contended that scores of civilians have been killed.
The Americans have pointed to the hit-and-run attacks on American troops by Iraqi paramilitary fighters, and said the Iraqis have repeatedly posed as civilians before suddenly attacking, sometimes using civilians as shields.
The Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf, used much of his appearance here today to offer a description of battlefield events in southern Iraq that implied that the Iraqi leadership has a hardening view that could be used to justify summary actions.
Outlining Iraqi war actions in the previous 24 hours, he said that Iraqi troops had "destroyed" four American tanks in a battle at Az Zubayr, south of the southern city of Basra, and that, in another incident outside Basra, Iraqi fighters had shot down an Apache helicopter.
In the case of the tanks, he said, the crewmen had all been "captured or killed." In the case of the Apache, the "two pilots" were dead. He said all the dead Americans had been buried where they fell, in accordance with new instructions from Baghdad, instead of the bodies being picked up.
Reading from a paper that appeared to have been prepared for him by the Iraqi Defense Ministry, Mr. Sahhaf gave no numbers for the American dead, and no other details of the encounters in which they were reportedly killed.
But in referring to the crews of the tanks, the minister said: "These crews were buried there, too, because we have issued orders that we cannot keep them there, because we have no refrigeration. So in accordance with an instruction to the Ministry of Religious Affairs, we will bury them, according to the traditions of their religions."
Asked if Iraq was keeping a record of the identities of the American soldiers who have been buried where they were killed, and of the locations, Mr. Sahhaf replied, "Yes, I think so."
He appeared impatient with questioning on the issue, and more eager to go into details of other battlefield incidents in which, he said, American soldiers had opened fire indiscriminately on Iraqi civilians.
Similar accounts of "war crimes" by Americans form a routine part of almost all the information minister's daily appearances before foreign reporters here.
Mr. Sahhaf was asked by an American reporter if the suicide bombing on Saturday outside Najaf did not put all Iraqi civilians at risk, since American troops were now on notice that Iraqis in civilian clothes, engaged in seemingly innocent activities, could intend to kill Americans.
"No, not at all," he replied, without elaboration. American officers have said all American units have been ordered to adopt new procedures in dealing with Iraqi civilians since the Najaf bombing.
The information minister gave an account of the killings at Najaf, and their aftermath, that illustrated the distance between American and Iraqi versions of what is happening in the war.
Iraqi actions that are represented by officials like Mr. Sahhaf as normal are viewed as potentially deadly by the Americans.
According to accounts by reporters embedded with the American troops at Najaf, the suicide bombing by a man in a taxi was followed minutes later by incidents in which three other taxis approached an Army checkpoint outside Najaf without stopping, prompting Bradley armored vehicles to open fire, destroying the taxis and killing an unknown number of Iraqis. In another incident reported by American journalists on Saturday, an Iraqi seized a woman as a shield near an American post, prompting a soldier to open fire, killing both the man and the woman.
Mr. Sahhaf had his own version of those events. Without mentioning the suicide bombing, he said that American troops had taken to firing "on any civilian car on the road," and had killed seven civilians in incidents outside Najaf.
"The U.S. is becoming more and more hysterical because they are being defeated on the battlefield, they are avenging what is happening on the battlefield," he said.
Much of the effort Iraq has made to depict American forces as "criminals" and "villains," in Mr. Sahhaf's phrase, centered on two incidents last week in which large numbers of Iraqi civilians were killed. On Wednesday, at least 14 civilians died when two blasts hit a stretch of workshops and apartments in north-central Baghdad. On Friday, 62 civilians were said by Iraqi officials have been killed, and 49 others injured, in an explosion beside a marketplace in the capital's northwestern suburbs. In both cases, Iraqi officials, and many survivors, blamed the American air attacks.
Spokesmen for the United States Central Command headquarters in Qatar, directing the war effort, have said that they have no record of American aircraft having fired the weapons in either case, but that they will examine both attacks further in an attempt to fix the causes. They have also said that Iraqi forces may have fired ground-to-air missiles that malfunctioned and caused the deaths, or played some other role in the explosions, perhaps by planting bombs. Those suggestions have infuriated Iraqi officials, and today it was Mr. Sahhaf's turn to mock them.
Had Iraqis played a role in the two explosions, he was asked at the news conference. His answer, in English, was characteristic of the polemics with which many of the most controversial issues are addressed.
"George W. Bush could be from Zaire!" he said, rocking with laughter. "This is silly. There is a logic, there is a common sense. But these liars, sometimes you are amazed. Are they a superpower, the Americans? I don't think so. Something is wrong, something doesn't match. When they are bombing Iraqi civilians and they say it is Iraqis who are doing it, this is so cheap, so shallow."
He concluded: "This will change nothing. This American serpent, this boa, is stretched there, and we will cut it to pieces."
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