"I'm a Journalist! I'm Dying! I'm Dying!"
One of Baghdad's Bloodiest Days
Baghdad.
"I am a journalist. I'm dying, I'm dying," screamed Mazen al-Tumeizi, a correspondent for the Arabic television channel al-Arabiya, after shrapnel from a rocket fired by an American helicopter interrupted his live broadcast and slammed into his back.
Twelve others were killed and 61 wounded by rockets from two US helicopters on Haifa Street in central Baghdad. They had fired into a crowd milling around a burning Bradley fighting vehicle that had been hit by a rocket or bomb hours before.
It comes on one of Iraq's bloodiest days for weeks in which at least 110 people died in clashes around the country. The Health Ministry said the worst casualties were in Baghdad and in Tal Afar near the Syrian border, where 51 people died.
"The helicopter fired on the Bradley to destroy it after it had been hit earlier and it was on fire," said Major Phil Smith of the 1st Cavalry Division. "It was for the safety of the people around it." Mr Tumeizi, a Palestinian, was the sixth Arab journalist to be killed by American troops since Baghdad was captured last year. The videotape of his last moments shows how Mr Tumeizi was killed during a live television broadcast, with the Bradley blazing in the distance and a crowd of young men celebrating its destruction, but it shows no reason why the helicopters should open fire.
Many of those hit by the rockets in Haifa Street, in a tough neighbourhood of tower blocks notorious as a centre of resistance to the occupation, were on their way to work. "We are just ordinary workers. We are just trying to live," said Haidar Yahyiah, 23, sobbing with pain from a broken leg as he lay in bed in nearby Karkh hospital.
He and others described how they had been woken by the sound of explosions in Haifa Street in the early dawn. They had been sleeping on the roofs because it is too hot in the Baghdad summer to sleep inside. They saw a vehicle on fire. But it was several hours later, at about 8am, that they sallied out.
By then US troops had already removed four lightly wounded soldiers from the Bradley.
Young men and children had swarmed over the vehicle, cheering triumphantly, waving black flags and setting it ablaze again. The US military said that a Kiowa, a light reconnaissance and attack helicopter, fired rockets at the Bradley to destroy weapons and ammunition on board. But it is evident from the al-Arabiya video that the rockets landed among people standing or walking far away from the Bradley.
Hamid Ali Khadum was on his way to work when he was hit. "At first I thought I had just tripped over dead people but then I realised I was wounded myself," he said as he lay in Karkh hospital waiting for an operation on his heavily bandaged left leg. The rest of his body was peppered with shrapnel. A male nurse standing nearby said: "This happens not just in Haifa Street but in all Baghdad, and not just in Baghdad but in all Iraq."
The slaughter in Haifa Street took place only a few hundred yards from the heavily defended International Zone (what used to be called the Green Zone) which houses the headquarters of the Iraqi government and its American ally. It is a measure of the military failure of the US occupation that it has failed to assume control of this Sunni Muslim neighbourhood in the heart of the capital. Early yesterday, insurgents fired more than a dozen rockets and mortars into the International Zone. The zone contains the US embassy and Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace.
There was violence elsewhere in Baghdad. Colonel Alaa Bashir, the police chief of the Yarmouk district in west Baghdad, was killed by a bomb while on patrol. A suicide bomber blew himself up in a vehicle packed with explosives at the gates to Abu Ghraib prison ? he was the only one to die. A US plane attacked a machine-gun team from the Mehdi Army in their stronghold in Sadr City in east Baghdad.
In Ramadi, a city controlled by insurgents west of Baghdad, 10 people were killed and 40 wounded in fighting, according to the local hospital. A US Humvee was also set ablaze, but casualties were unknown.
PATRICK COCKBURN
Baghdad.
"I am a journalist. I'm dying, I'm dying," screamed Mazen al-Tumeizi, a correspondent for the Arabic television channel al-Arabiya, after shrapnel from a rocket fired by an American helicopter interrupted his live broadcast and slammed into his back.
Twelve others were killed and 61 wounded by rockets from two US helicopters on Haifa Street in central Baghdad. They had fired into a crowd milling around a burning Bradley fighting vehicle that had been hit by a rocket or bomb hours before.
It comes on one of Iraq's bloodiest days for weeks in which at least 110 people died in clashes around the country. The Health Ministry said the worst casualties were in Baghdad and in Tal Afar near the Syrian border, where 51 people died.
"The helicopter fired on the Bradley to destroy it after it had been hit earlier and it was on fire," said Major Phil Smith of the 1st Cavalry Division. "It was for the safety of the people around it." Mr Tumeizi, a Palestinian, was the sixth Arab journalist to be killed by American troops since Baghdad was captured last year. The videotape of his last moments shows how Mr Tumeizi was killed during a live television broadcast, with the Bradley blazing in the distance and a crowd of young men celebrating its destruction, but it shows no reason why the helicopters should open fire.
Many of those hit by the rockets in Haifa Street, in a tough neighbourhood of tower blocks notorious as a centre of resistance to the occupation, were on their way to work. "We are just ordinary workers. We are just trying to live," said Haidar Yahyiah, 23, sobbing with pain from a broken leg as he lay in bed in nearby Karkh hospital.
He and others described how they had been woken by the sound of explosions in Haifa Street in the early dawn. They had been sleeping on the roofs because it is too hot in the Baghdad summer to sleep inside. They saw a vehicle on fire. But it was several hours later, at about 8am, that they sallied out.
By then US troops had already removed four lightly wounded soldiers from the Bradley.
Young men and children had swarmed over the vehicle, cheering triumphantly, waving black flags and setting it ablaze again. The US military said that a Kiowa, a light reconnaissance and attack helicopter, fired rockets at the Bradley to destroy weapons and ammunition on board. But it is evident from the al-Arabiya video that the rockets landed among people standing or walking far away from the Bradley.
Hamid Ali Khadum was on his way to work when he was hit. "At first I thought I had just tripped over dead people but then I realised I was wounded myself," he said as he lay in Karkh hospital waiting for an operation on his heavily bandaged left leg. The rest of his body was peppered with shrapnel. A male nurse standing nearby said: "This happens not just in Haifa Street but in all Baghdad, and not just in Baghdad but in all Iraq."
The slaughter in Haifa Street took place only a few hundred yards from the heavily defended International Zone (what used to be called the Green Zone) which houses the headquarters of the Iraqi government and its American ally. It is a measure of the military failure of the US occupation that it has failed to assume control of this Sunni Muslim neighbourhood in the heart of the capital. Early yesterday, insurgents fired more than a dozen rockets and mortars into the International Zone. The zone contains the US embassy and Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace.
There was violence elsewhere in Baghdad. Colonel Alaa Bashir, the police chief of the Yarmouk district in west Baghdad, was killed by a bomb while on patrol. A suicide bomber blew himself up in a vehicle packed with explosives at the gates to Abu Ghraib prison ? he was the only one to die. A US plane attacked a machine-gun team from the Mehdi Army in their stronghold in Sadr City in east Baghdad.
In Ramadi, a city controlled by insurgents west of Baghdad, 10 people were killed and 40 wounded in fighting, according to the local hospital. A US Humvee was also set ablaze, but casualties were unknown.
PATRICK COCKBURN
posted by R7 | 9/15/2004 05:37:00 AM
1 Comments:
TV Reporter Killed By US Fire
During Live Baghdad Broadcast
By Martin Asser
BBC News Online
Journalist Mazen Tumeisi is seen falling and his blood covers the lens
Sunday's bloody events on Baghdad's Haifa Street came amid some of the
fiercest fighting for months in the centre of the Iraqi capital.
But though they were captured by television cameras, two very different
accounts have emerged about what happened.
At least 13 people were killed and about 60 others were wounded by US
helicopter fire as they milled around the burning wreckage of an
American armoured vehicle that had been ambushed by insurgents early in the
morning.
News footage shows a few dozen curious Iraqis standing around the
Bradley Fighting Vehicle just before the missile strike.
In the foreground, Mazen Tumeisi, a Palestinian working for two
Saudi-owned TV networks, al-Arabiya and al-Ikhbariya, is preparing to be
recorded on camera as he describes the scene.
After evacuating the wounded, air support destroyed the Bradley
fighting vehicle to prevent looting and harm to the Iraqi people
First US military statement
Suddenly a big explosion engulfs the street in smoke. Tumeisi
collapses. The lens is spattered with his blood.
As the camera swings around wildly, the fatally wounded journalist can
be heard groaning his last words: "I'm going to die. I'm going to die.
Seif [his cameraman]. Seif. I'm going to die."
As well as Tumeisi, two children - very possibly the ones smiling at
the camera moments earlier - were among the dead.
Fierce fighting
According to media reports, the fighting started at about 0440 (0040
GMT) in Haifa Street, a notorious snipers' alley on the west bank of the
Tigris that is out of US military control.
The Bradley was hit by a roadside bomb after it had raced to the scene
following mortar bombs being launched at the nearby Green Zone, seat of
the Iraqi government and US forces.
Some people were celebrating the attack, others were curiously
onlookers
Gun battles reportedly raged around the wreck for about an hour. The
attackers fired on the American rescue crew as they evacuated the
stricken vehicle.
The fighting had clearly died down by the time the journalists arrived
before 0800.
Press photographers took pictures of the wreck and the Iraqis around
it, including young men waving the flag of Abu Musab Zarqawi's
al-Qaeda-linked group Tawhid and Jihad. One youth climbed onto the Bradley and
thrust the flag pole down the narrow barrel of its 25mm gun.
Most of the onlookers did not appear to be celebrating the "kill", just
standing around curiously staring at the burning wreck.
I went back to the scene to help the wounded people when the
helicopter fired again and I was hit in the chest
Alaa Hassan
The first reports of the helicopter attack came at 0756. As well as two
missiles, the aircraft directed machine-gun fire at the crowd, reports
say.
As the smoke cleared, people carried away the injured, leaving
scattered shoes, pools of fresh blood and debris littering the street.
"We were standing near the destroyed vehicle when the helicopter
started firing, so we rushed to safety in a nearby building," said
24-year-old Alaa Hassan from his hospital bed.
"I went back to the scene to help the wounded people when the
helicopter fired again and I was hit in the chest."
'To prevent looting'
The official US military statement significantly shortens the timescale
of events as reported by separate international news agencies.
Instead of three hours after the ambush, when the people on the scene
were mainly curious locals and journalist, the US says the helicopter
strike was at 0730, 40 minutes after the Bradley was attacked at 0650.
In the first explanation of events offered by the US military early on
Sunday evening, the helicopter was said to have blown up the wrecked
Bradley "to prevent looting and harm to the Iraqi people".
A second explanation came a few hours later suggesting that air support
had been called in by the Bradley crew to prevent looting, but the
helicopters were fired on from the ground.
"Clearly within the rules of engagement, the helicopters returned fire
destroying some anti-Iraqi forces in the vicinity of the Bradley," the
US statement said.
In a phone call from Baghdad on Monday, the US military was unable to
clarify why none of the TV footage or press pictures showed armed people
at the scene or recorded any gunfire.
As for the discrepancies in the times of events - the military
spokesman told BBC News Online that the US timings were "approximate".
Media toll
It is not the first time al-Arabiya has lost journalists through US
fire in Iraq. Correspondent Ali al-Khatib and cameraman Ali Abdelaziz were
shot at a US checkpoint in March.
But the attack on Haifa Street could be significant, as it took place
in the full glare of the media spotlight and it seems likely to further
increase Iraqi anger at the effects on the civilian population of US
military action.
There was no warning not to be there, and definitely civilians and
journalists will go to a place like this to see what has happened
Arabiya editor Nabil Khatib
Tumeisi is the fourth Palestinian to be killed since the US invasion.
Mazen Dana, a Reuters cameraman from Hebron, was also shot and died
while his camera was running.
Arabiya's main rival station, al-Jazeera has lost staff in Iraq as
well. In each case the dead men's employers have lodged complaints about
the circumstances of the deaths with the US military, but no action has
been taken.
"The American explanation raises more questions than it answers,"
Arabiya executive editor Nabil Khatib told BBC News Online.
Mr Khatib, who has asked for a more information from the US military,
is particularly concerned that Mazen Tumeisi seemed to have been
standing more than 50 metres from the wrecked Bradley.
"We can't call it a mistake, but we cannot say that Mazen Tumeisi was
deliberately targeted," he said.
"What we can say is that it was irresponsible to attack this place.
"There was no warning not to be there, and definitely civilians and
journalists will go to a place like this to see what has happened."
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