US airstrikes 'kill 70' in Iraq
The Guardian ^ | Monday October 17, 2005
The US military said today that strikes by US warplanes and helicopters on two villages west of Baghdad had killed 70 militants, while witnesses claimed there were many civilians among the dead. The strikes took place yesterday in the Ramadi area - a stronghold for Sunni insurgents - in response to a roadside bomb that killed five US soldiers in a vehicle in the nearby village of Al-Bu Ubaid on Saturday.
The US military said warplanes and helicopters attacked after a crowd of Iraqis had gathered at the site of the wreckage a day after the bombing, believing the crowd to be insurgents trying to set up another bomb in the immediate area.
But several witnesses and one local leader said the people were civilians who had gathered to look at the wreckage of the US vehicle or take pieces off of it.
Local tribal leader Chiad Saad and other witnesses said the strikes killed 25 civilians.
Yesterday's violence came a day after Iraq voted in a referendum on whether to accept the country's draft constitution, which many Sunnis oppose.
The final result is yet to be announced but early indications suggest the minority Sunnis have failed in their effort to veto it at the polls.
It appears that opponents of the constitution failed to secure the necessary two-thirds No vote in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces, according to counts that local officials provided to the Associated Press.
The Sunni campaign appeared to have hit the two-thirds threshold in two provinces - Anbar, the vast Sunni heartlandto the west of Baghdad, and Salahuddin - where Sunnis are also in a large majority and as many as 90% of voters cast ballots.
In two other provinces where the Sunni majority is small - Nineva and Diyala - the Yes vote appears to have won out.
A foreign election observer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AP the Iraqi electoral commission would announce the official result later this week.
The US and British governments see the adoption of a constitution as a key stage in creating a sovereign Iraq and in helping to bring about the withdrawal of troops.
However, the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, admitted yesterday that violence will continue in Iraq, even if the new constitution is adopted.
She said support for the insurgency would eventually wane as the country moves toward democracy.
In further violence today, a drive-by shooting killed two policemen in Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, and a suicide bomber attacked a cleric's funeral in Samarra, 60 miles north of the capital, killing two civilians and wounding one, police said.
Some 535 people who have died in insurgent attacks across Iraq in the last three weeks.
In Baghdad, the country's president, Jalal Talabani, issued a decree yesterday setting December 15 as election day for a new parliament.
If Saturday's constitution referendum is passed, the first full-term parliament since Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003 will install a new government by December 31.
If the constitution is rejected, the parliament will be temporary and have responsibility for drawing up a new draft on which to vote.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1594349,00.html
but so many dead for Insurgents 