When did children quit being civilians?
Fierce fighting between US forces and militants in Baghdad’s Shi’ite stronghold of Sadr City killed an estimated 49 “criminals”, the US military said yesterday.
[ ….. ]
Medics at two hospitals in Sadr City, a sprawling, predominantly Shi’ite and poor part of the capital dominated by militia loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, confirmed only 10 dead, including a boy and a girl.
US military spokesman Major Winfield Danielson said there were no civilian casualties and no reports of American losses.
“I can say that we don’t have any evidence of any civilians killed or wounded. Coalition forces only engage hostile threats and make every effort to protect innocent civilians.”
Pictures taken by an AFP photographer as grieving relatives carried off the bodies of the dead for burial showed the body of a young boy in a coffin and several wounded people being treated by hospital emergency staff.
And what did the Iraqi government have to say about this?
…..the American military should avoid using excessive force that ran the risk of harming civilians and that the government would investigate the episode.
– that’s telling them al-Maliki, don’t take no guff off them, they’ll certainly know better than to kill any more children after this won’t they…. and if they do maybe you can threaten them with the comfey chair.
Maybe while you’re all worked up over the deaths of more women and children you could give the militants, insurgents, and militias the same tongue lashing and then it would all be over wouldn’t it?
Caught between an army of occupation and various insurgent and militant groups who don’t really care how many innocents die — quite the place Iraqi’s find themselves in isn’t it?
That’s a slippery piece of journalism you’re working on there. You can’t say one way or another whether there were collateral deaths in that attack, although I won’t deny the Iraqi conflict has had am immense share of it. Keep this in mind though. Recent NATO reports from Afghanistan indicate that media is often left without adequate reports from reluctant government agencies unwilling to release information until it is all collected and analyzed, leaving the militants the happy task of filling in the blanks, i.e.: NATO just killed 39 civilians.