FALLUJAH, Iraq, September 9 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Women and children were among 12 people killed in an overnight fresh US missile strike of the western Baghdad city of Fallujah, press reports and medical sources said Thursday, September 9.
Local residents removed bodies from the rubble of a house in the city demolished in the dead of night by a US missile while people were sleeping, a correspondent for Agence France-Presse (AFP) on the scene reported.
Doctor Mushtak Taleb from Fallujah's general hospital said 12 bodies had been brought in, including five children and two women, and that at least nine people had been wounded since the raids began.
Sleeping
Witnesses told AFP that the family who lived in the single-storey house was sleeping on the roof when the missile ploughed through the building, blowing their bodies to smithereens.
The roof had collapsed entirely and two small cranes were trying to lift up the debris to allow rescuers to search for more people.
Several neighboring houses in the Nowad Al-Dhubat district were damaged and children could be seen sifting through rubble and mangled metal to help collect pieces of flesh.
Local inhabitants were furious over the raid, further to escalate anti-American sentiments among ordinary Iraqis.
"We were sleeping on the roof because the electricity keeps going off at night. When the explosion went off, the blast threw me back by at least five meters," said neighbor Khaled Abbas.
"First I thought the explosion was in my house but when I awoke from the shock I saw that the neighbours had been hit," he told AFP.
He said the owner of the house had four wives, two of whom lived in the house with at least 10 children.
"All the children next door used to fill the streets with noise. Today I hope they will be like birds in heaven," Abbas said.
"I want to know why the Americans decided to bomb a family with children," he said, with an apparent expression of anger.
US Claims
The US military, for its part, claimed it had carried out a raid in Fallujah overnight against a hideout used by operatives of suspected Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi's network in Iraq – blamed for most attacks against American occupation forces.
But local inhabitants dismissed the allegations, citing the fall of women and children as victims to the American air raids. Iraqi fighters in Fallujah denied in June 25, the presence of Al-Zarqawi in their town adding they were simply defending their homeland against occupation forces.
At least 700 Iraqis, mostly women and children, were killed and 1500 others injured when the US occupation forces imposed a tight siege on the town and intensified air strikes on its densely-populated areas.
Hundreds of houses and the town’s only hospital were demolished by the US aircraft in the raids, putting Washington under an intense wave of criticism by world human rights groups.
But the overwhelming firepower of the US occupation troops has failed so far to break the staunch will of Fallujah resistance fighters.
The US military reported late Wednesday, September 8, that one of its helicopters had crashed near Fallujah but did not specify whether it had been shot down and said only that the four-man crew was safe.
17 Iraqis Killed
Another 17 Iraqis were killed and 51 wounded in the a US-led Iraqi overnight assault on Tall Afar, hospital sources said Thursday.
As the seven-hour bombardment dragged on until morning, clashes flared between US forces and fighters on the ground. Bodies strewn in the streets could not be collected until quiet returned, said an AFP reporter.