More kids killed
U.S. Bombs Kill at Least 11 Civilians Near Hilla
Tue April 01, 2003 11:37 AM ET
HILLA, Iraq (Reuters) - At least 11 civilians, most of them children, were killed when U.S. bombs hit a residential district in the town of Hilla in central Iraq overnight, Reuters reporters said on Tuesday.
The reporters, taken by the Iraqi authorities to a hospital in Hilla, some 80 km (50 miles) south of Baghdad, saw a pick-up truck ferrying dead people, mostly children.
"What has he done wrong, what has he done wrong?" the driver of the truck said as he held the body of an infant. Grieving relatives wept in the open as the bodies were taken inside.
One journalist counted 11 bodies of civilians and two of Iraqi fighters.
A hospital employee said the death toll stood at 33 civilians, with more than 300 wounded.
"God take our revenge on America," a stunned man said repeatedly at the hospital. Hospital staff said the man's whole family was wiped out.
Residents said U.S. forces had attacked the town on Monday but were pushed back by a combination of regular and irregular Iraqi forces. As the Americans retreated, they shelled the town, the residents said.
The Iraqi authorities did not take the journalists to the district hit.
Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said earlier on Tuesday that a total of 56 civilians had been killed in Iraq in U.S.-led air raids over the past day.
He told a news conference that 24 civilians were killed in Baghdad, 19 of them overnight and five this morning.
He put the death toll among children in the Hilla incident at nine.
"This morning the villains have bombarded...the Nader district in the southern part of the city. Nine Iraqi children were martyred, among them one small baby," Sahaf said.
Sahaf said the number of wounded rose to more than 250 people, more than 125 of them in the Iraqi capital, which has been suffering round-the-clock aerial bombardment.
But in the defiant rhetoric that has become the hallmark of Iraq's official war briefings, Sahaf said the invading forces were suffering increasing losses and would be defeated.
"Day by day they are becoming more hysterical...They are racists, so they started killing the Iraqis... indiscriminately," he said.
Sahaf said Iraqi forces had shot down an Apache at Tarha near the southern city of Basra. He added that Basra, Iraq's second biggest city, remained firmly under Iraqi control, despite a lengthy siege by British forces.
Elsewhere, Sahaf reported continued fierce fighting at Nassiriya and Najaf on the Euphrates river.
"(At Najaf) we destroyed seven tanks of those villains. The Fedayeen Saddam (militia) destroyed seven armored personnel carriers," he said, adding that U.S. forces had had to retreat into the desert.
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