More Than 50 Dead in Air Raid on Baghdad Market Fri March 28, 2003 02:23 PM ET
By Hassan Hafidh
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 55 people were killed in an air raid on a Baghdad market on Friday, an Iraqi doctor said, giving details of casualties that could further undermine U.S. efforts to win Iraqi hearts and minds.
Dr. Osama Sakhari at Baghdad's Al Noor Hospital said he had counted 55 people killed and more than 47 wounded from the attack at the market in the city's Shula neighborhood.
This Reuters correspondent personally counted five bodies in one of the hospital's morgue units.
Arabic language television stations Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya said searchers were looking for more victims, and showed pictures of people carrying coffins out of the hospital which was surrounded by large crowds.
Al-Jazeera's correspondent said: "An Iraqi official told us that the search is still going on for those trapped under the rubble." The television showed pictures of bodies, including those of two children.
Television pictures of bodies and damage in Iraq have fueled Arab anger against the U.S.-led invasion which Washington says is not aimed at ordinary Iraqis.
It says that the nine-day-old war is aimed at removing President Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership and ridding the country of weapons of mass destruction. Baghdad denies it has any such weapons.
Abu Dhabi television said U.S. cruise missiles may have hit the market and showed a gaping hole on one street and damaged cars.
The U.S. military blamed an earlier explosion in a Baghdad residential area on an errant Iraqi missile.
Jazeera showed pictures of bodies at the scene and in the hospital. It also showed an Iraqi woman hitting herself in the face repeatedly as she stared through a window at a wounded young man lying in a hospital bed. A group of men shouted "There is no God but God" as they stood beside an ambulance.
Reuters correspondent Nadim Ladki said a series of blasts hit the city after nightfall after U.S. and British bombs and missiles had pounded the capital in the heaviest day of raids since the war began.
Earlier on Friday, the Muslim holy day, residents said eight people died in a raid on a Baath party office.
U.S. defense officials said a radar-avoiding B-2 stealth bomber had dropped two 4,600-pound bombs -- known as "bunker-busters" -- on a communications center in downtown Baghdad.
Iraq swore to fight on and promised "living hell" for the invaders.
Ladki quoted residents as saying the attack on the Baath office in Baghdad's Mansour district at around noon demolished the party's neighborhood office and several nearby houses.
"It basically turned the block into rubble," Ladki said. Local residents said they had pulled eight bodies from the wreckage, including Baath Party militia members and several civilians.
A large fire blazed on the west bank of the Tigris river and thick, billowing smoke rose on the horizon after dozens of blasts in the eastern and southern fringes of the capital.
Iraqi defense positions spat anti-aircraft fire above the rooftops as U.S. missiles hit government offices, including the ministries of information, planning and foreign affairs.
The U.S. military said two precision-guided missiles from one of its bat-wing, radar-evading B-2 stealth bombers had taken out a key communications tower on the east bank of the Tigris.
The raids knocked out many telephone lines -- some of the first bombing damage to civilian infrastructure.
OIL TRENCHES
Huge plumes of black smoke from burning oil pits, lit by Iraqi forces to try to hamper U.S. and British pilots, clouded the otherwise clear blue skies over the city.
Hundreds of ruling Baath party militiamen armed with AK-47 assault rifles guarded government buildings and manned sandbag positions in public squares and guardens.
Explosions seemed to come from all sides during one concentrated phase of bombing in the early hours of the morning, raising orange-glowing clouds into the night skies.
A flurry of blasts was clearly audible during a live television interview by Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaf, who said his country would not be cowed.
"It will become obvious to the world that they (U.S. and British forces) have entered (Iraq) with a kind of stupidity based on a simple idea that 'shock and awe' will make Iraqis kneel," he said, the night sky briefly illuminated behind him. |
