- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq
said on Saturday 250 civilians had been wounded in bombing of Baghdad and
denied U.S. and British claims of successes in their invasion of the country.
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- At a news conference after a night of heavy bombing of
the Iraqi capital, Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf denied
that U.S. and British troops had taken the key southern port of Umm Qasr
or two air bases in the western desert.
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- He said these reports were "illusions and lies."
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- He said that during last night's Baghdad raids alone,
the "international gang of criminal bastards" wounded 207 civilians.
The remaining casualties were cause by earlier raids.
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- "Until an hour ago, the total number of civilian
injuries -- men, women and children -- was 207 and they are all in five
Baghdad hospitals," Sahaf said.
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- "(U.S. Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld said that
they attacked military installations. We will show you the 207 military
positions they hit lying in the hospitals."
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- Peppering his comments with fiery rhetoric and insults
against the United States and Britain, the Iraqi minister said Iraqi forces
had destroyed five enemy tanks and inflicted casualties on the invading
force. He denied they had captured the strategic Faw peninsula and its
vital oil installations.
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- "They failed to break our defenses in Umm Qasr.
Our forces are still standing and until now the battles are fierce and
we've inflicted large casualties on them," he said.
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- "In Faw, the British lied. Our forces are still
there, and fighting is fierce."
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- Sahaf also denied reports that Iraqi forces had been
taken prisoners. "These losers just want anything, anything to show
that they've taken prisoners, but they only kidnapped civilians in Faw,
these mercenaries and cowards," he said.
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- "They just want to tell the world... the tax payers,
their people, that they're succeeding but they are lying."
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- "They are a gang of war criminals," he said
of the U.S. and British forces making inroads into Iraq. "They are
not normal humans, they are criminals by nature and by preparation. The
U.S. administration trains its leaders to be criminals."
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