US rejects Iraqi accusations on deadly night raid

Amid a swirl of conflicting versions of the events late Sunday, the US military said Iraqi special forces raided a meeting hall in northeast Baghdad being used by an insurgent cell and killed 16 people and detained 18 others.

Iraqi television on Sunday night showed pictures of blood spattered corpses inside what they called the Mustafa mosque. Many of the dead were elderly and their identity proclaimed them to be members of prominent political parties.

The Imam Ali hospital, in nearby Sadr City, reported 17 dead and five wounded in an incident that risks further inflaming sectarian tensions in Iraq.

"Iraqi commandos and soldiers from the Iraqi counter-terrorism force killed 16 insurgents and wounded three others during a house-to-house search on an objective with multiple structures," said the US military.

The statement added that the Iraqi special forces "received fire almost immediately from several buildings near the target area. They maintained the outer perimeter that enabled an assault force to move quickly to clear and secure the objective, a compound of several buildings."

The US military admitted that members of the US special forces were present in an advisory capacity and said that "no mosques were entered or damaged during this operation."

The statement added that the meeting house was the headquarters of an insurgent cell linked to attacks on coalition and Iraqi forces as well as kidnapping Iraqi civilians.

Large numbers of weapons were found, including dozens of assault rifles, rocket propelled grenades and launchers, two heavy machine guns and material to make explosives.

A dental technician with the Ministry of Health who had been taken hostage the day before was also rescued. He had been tortured for the last 12 hours, reported the US military.

The incident had been originally described as a clash between radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr's Medhi Army and US forces and then a massacre inside a mosque provoking outrage among Iraqis in the neighborhood and Shiite politicians.

Hazam al-Aaraji, a high ranking official in Sadr's movement, flatly denied the US version of events.

"This is a lie, we saw unarmed worshippers and we didn't find any Iraqi weapons. This place was just for praying and worshipping and it included different groups of Shittes, including not just Mehdi Army but Dawa Party as well."

Aside from during full scale battlefield conflict like the re-taking of Fallujah in November 2004, US forces have a strict policy of not entering or attacking mosques. Iraqi forces are brought in if such a building needs to be investigated.

The incident comes at a particularly tense time with a rising tide of corpses from sectarian killings and the US putting increasing pressure on Iraq's political factions to form a long awaited national unity government.

Since the dynamiting of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra on February 22, corpses showing signs of torture have been discovered on a regular basis in Baghdad and surrounding provinces, victims of tit-for-tat sectarian killings.

On Monday, police discovered nine more corpses dumped in an empty lot used to sell used cars. The bodies had all been killed by strangulation.

Police also reported recovering 18 corpses from a stash of at least 30 headless bodies found northeast of the capital by villagers in Diyalah province.

The US government believes that the sectarian conflict can be stemmed by the rapid formation of a national unity government and on Sunday, US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad once more urged Iraqi politicians to move swiftly.

"It is critical that the newly elected leaders of Iraq do their part by forming a government of national unity with a good program and competent ministers as soon as possible," said Khalilzad.

At the end of meetings Sunday, Iraq's political factions were still deadlocked over the issues of forming a new government. Talks resumed Monday.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair predicted a possible substantial "draw down" of British troops in Iraq, but only once Iraqi security forces are capable of defending the country.

"What's happening now in Iraq is that the Iraqi security forces and the army are building up their capability. As that happens we can draw down," he said on Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.

Source

About headlines and content that has changed after it was added to this site - see disclaimer here

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.