- At least 11 civilians, nine of them children, were killed
in Hilla in central Iraq yesterday, according to reporters in the town
who said they appeared to be the victims of bombing.
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- Reporters from the Reuters news agency said they counted
the bodies of 11 civilians and two Iraqi fighters in the Babylon suburb,
50 miles south of Baghdad. Nine of the dead were children, one a baby.
Hospital workers said as many as 33 civilians were killed.
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- Terrifying film of women and children later emerged after
Reuters and the Associated Press were permitted by the Iraqi authorities
to take their cameras into the town. Their pictures ñ the first
by Western news agencies from the Iraqi side of the battlefront ñ
showed babies cut in half and children with amputation wounds, apparently
caused by American shellfire and cluster bombs.
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- Much of the videotape was too terrible to show on television
and the agencies' Baghdad editors felt able to send only a few minutes
of a 21-minute tape that included a father holding out pieces of his baby
and screaming "cowards, cowards'' into the camera. Two lorryloads
of bodies, including women in flowered dresses, could be seen outside the
Hilla hospital.
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- Dr Nazem el-Adali, who was trained in Edinburgh, said
almost all the patients were victims of cluster bombs dropped around Hella
and in the neighbouring village of Mazarak. One woman, Alia Mukhtaff, is
seen lying wounded on a bed; she lost six of her children and her husband
in the attacks. Another man is seen with an arm missing, and a second man,
Majeed Djelil, whose wife and two of his children were killed, can be seen
sitting next to his third and surviving child, whose foot is missing. The
mortuary of the hospital, a butcher's shop of chopped up corpses, is seen
briefly in the tape.
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- Iraqi officials have been insisting for 48 hours that
the Americans have used cluster bombs on civilians in the region but this
is the first time that evidence supporting these claims has come from Western
news agencies. Most of the wounded said they were hit by American munitions
and one man described how an American vehicle fired a shell into his family
home. "I could see an American flag,'' he says.
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- One of the editors in Baghdad, a European, when asked
why he would not send the full videotape to London, wound the pictures
on to two mutilated corpses of babies. "How could we ever send this?''
he said.
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- Further south, there was heavy fire around the town of
Diwaniyah, about 80 miles south-east of Baghdad. It was the second day
of close combat between American forces and Iraqi troops, after fighting
in the town of Hindiyah on Monday. It appeared that US troops were looking
to take on some Iraqi forces after initially advancing largely unopposed
through vast tracts of empty desert but deliberately avoiding population
centres.
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- According to reports from Diwaniyah, US Marines deliberately
provoked a firefight by moving into an area where they had come under fire
before. The marines came under heavy fire from rocket-propelled grenades
and machine-guns.
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- Iraqi Republican Guard troops and other fighters fired
on the advancing marines from fortified bunkers and positions in buildings
and behind vehicles. Corporal Patrick Irish of the US Marines said: "They
were shooting from buildings, from dug-out positions, from holes, from
everything. They would jump out to shoot. They were behind buses. You name
it, they were there."
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- Although the Iraqis were outgunned by the heavily armed
marines, the firefight went on for about 10 hours, according to Lieutenant-Colonel
B P McCoy of the US Marines. They used 155mm artillery to destroy Iraqi
tanks and mortar positions. "We hammered them pretty hard," said
Lt-Col McCoy. At least 75 Iraqis were killed in fighting on Diwaniyah's
outskirts and at least 44 soldiers, including some Republican Guard officers,
were taken prisoner, Lt-Col McCoy said. There was no report of American
casualties.
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- North-east of Diwaniyah there was heavy bombing yesterday
near Kut to clear the way for ground forces, according to the US military.
American marines also claim to have "secured" an air base at
Qalat Sukkar, south-east of Kut, which US forces want to use as a staging
ground.
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- Overnight, planes bombed the area around Hindiyah. Ominously,
there were also reports of missiles streaking towards the Shia holy city
of Kerbala, where any damage to the shrines could set the Shia Muslim world
alight.
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- The Iraqi military said its troops were fighting US forces
inside Nasiriyah and on the outskirts of the city, and had inflicted heavy
casualties. "The blood of the enemy is flowing profusely," a
military spokesman said at a press briefing, who claimed that fighting
was still going on as he spoke. He claimed the forces fighting in and around
Nasiriyah included Republican Guards, regular Iraqi army soldiers, volunteers
from across the Arab world, and ordinary Iraqi citizens.
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- US Marines fought their way across the city's bridges
last Tuesday but did not take control of the city. Since then, Iraqi forces
have made several ambushes in the area.
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- The Iraqi spokesman also said US forces launched an attack
on the Shia holy city of Najaf yesterday, and claimed fighters inside the
city had forced them to retreat after suffering heavy losses.
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=393127
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