Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Washington Times
May 4, 2008
Pg. 4
By Bradley Brooks, Associated Press
BAGHDAD--The U.S. military fired guided missiles into the heart of Baghdad's teeming Sadr City slum yesterday, leveling a building about 55 yards away from a hospital and injuring nearly two dozen people.
AP Television News footage showed several ambulances destroyed and on fire, with thick, black smoke rising from them as firefighters worked to put out the flames.
The strike, made from a ground launcher, took out a militant "command-control center," the U.S. military said. The center was located in the heart of the eight-square-mile neighborhood that is home to about 2.5 million people. Iraqi officials said at least 23 people were injured.
The U.S. military blamed the militants for using Iraqi civilians as human shields.
"This is a circumstance where these criminal groups are operating directly out of civilian neighborhoods," military spokeswoman Spc. Megan Burmeister said in an e-mail.
She said it presents a "complex and very difficult" challenge for U.S. forces to strike the militants when they are "putting themselves next to municipal buildings."
Dr. Ali Bustan al-Fartusee, director general of Baghdad's health directorate, said 23 civilians were injured in the strike.
He said no patients in the hospital were hurt, but that some of the wounded included civilians outside on their way to visit patients in the hospital. He also said 17 ambulances were damaged or destroyed.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have waged street battles with Shi'ite militias since late March in Sadr City, the power base of radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.
The fighting is part of a five-week-old crackdown by the Iraqi government and U.S. forces on Shi'ite militia factions. The clashes have created deep rifts among Iraq's Shi'ite majority and have pulled U.S. troops into difficult urban combat.
Militia members have been blamed for firing hundreds of rockets or mortars from Sadr City into the Green Zone, the U.S.-protected area housing the U.S. Embassy and much of the Iraqi government.
In response to the shelling, American and Iraqi troops in recent weeks have moved into Sadr City, hoping to push the militants far enough from the Green Zone so their rockets and mortars would be out of range.
During clashes over the past two days in Sadr City, at least 100 people have been killed, Iraqi health officials said.
The U.S. military said late yesterday that four Marines were killed on Thursday by a roadside bomb in Anbar province.
The military also said that an American soldier died of wounds suffered in a roadside bomb that struck the soldier's vehicle during a combat patrol in eastern Baghdad Friday.
Georgian Defense Ministry spokesman Giga Tatishvili said two servicemen from the ex-Soviet republic were killed and one wounded south of Baghdad on Friday when a parked car bomb exploded.
May 4, 2008
Pg. 4
By Bradley Brooks, Associated Press
BAGHDAD--The U.S. military fired guided missiles into the heart of Baghdad's teeming Sadr City slum yesterday, leveling a building about 55 yards away from a hospital and injuring nearly two dozen people.
AP Television News footage showed several ambulances destroyed and on fire, with thick, black smoke rising from them as firefighters worked to put out the flames.
The strike, made from a ground launcher, took out a militant "command-control center," the U.S. military said. The center was located in the heart of the eight-square-mile neighborhood that is home to about 2.5 million people. Iraqi officials said at least 23 people were injured.
The U.S. military blamed the militants for using Iraqi civilians as human shields.
"This is a circumstance where these criminal groups are operating directly out of civilian neighborhoods," military spokeswoman Spc. Megan Burmeister said in an e-mail.
She said it presents a "complex and very difficult" challenge for U.S. forces to strike the militants when they are "putting themselves next to municipal buildings."
Dr. Ali Bustan al-Fartusee, director general of Baghdad's health directorate, said 23 civilians were injured in the strike.
He said no patients in the hospital were hurt, but that some of the wounded included civilians outside on their way to visit patients in the hospital. He also said 17 ambulances were damaged or destroyed.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have waged street battles with Shi'ite militias since late March in Sadr City, the power base of radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.
The fighting is part of a five-week-old crackdown by the Iraqi government and U.S. forces on Shi'ite militia factions. The clashes have created deep rifts among Iraq's Shi'ite majority and have pulled U.S. troops into difficult urban combat.
Militia members have been blamed for firing hundreds of rockets or mortars from Sadr City into the Green Zone, the U.S.-protected area housing the U.S. Embassy and much of the Iraqi government.
In response to the shelling, American and Iraqi troops in recent weeks have moved into Sadr City, hoping to push the militants far enough from the Green Zone so their rockets and mortars would be out of range.
During clashes over the past two days in Sadr City, at least 100 people have been killed, Iraqi health officials said.
The U.S. military said late yesterday that four Marines were killed on Thursday by a roadside bomb in Anbar province.
The military also said that an American soldier died of wounds suffered in a roadside bomb that struck the soldier's vehicle during a combat patrol in eastern Baghdad Friday.
Georgian Defense Ministry spokesman Giga Tatishvili said two servicemen from the ex-Soviet republic were killed and one wounded south of Baghdad on Friday when a parked car bomb exploded.