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    Pentagon says it hit fighters, not Iraqi wedding
    (Agencies)
    Updated: 2004-05-20 09:12

    U.S. forces killed dozens in an attack in Iraq's western desert, the army said on Thursday, but reports the victims were civilians at a wedding sparked outrage as Washington struggled to contain a prisoner abuse scandal.


    Video from The Associated Press shows what appears to be a burial. [APTN]
    Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the U.S. military in Iraq, told Reuters the attack early on Wednesday targeted "a suspected foreign fighter safe house," 16 miles east of the Syrian border.

    But Dubai-based Al Arabiya television, quoting eyewitnesses, said the raid on the village of Makr al-Deeb had targeted people celebrating a wedding and had killed at least 41 civilians.

    "At 0300 (7 p.m. EDT Tuesday) we conducted an operation... against suspected foreign fighters in a safe house," Kimmitt said. "We took ground fire and we returned fire."

    Asked about reports of dozens killed, he said: "We are not disputing the numbers you are hearing. We estimate that around 40 were killed. But we operated within our rules of engagement."

    Washington says the daily dose of death and destruction in Iraq will not delay its handing sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30, but analysts say the handover will not stop Iraq dominating debate during the run-up to November's presidential election.

    U.S. General John Abizaid, who oversees military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, predicted a surge in violence after June 30 and leading up to Iraqi polls at the end of the year.


    Video from the Associated Press shows wedding mourners. [APTN]
    Arabiya showed pictures of several shrouded bodies lined up on a dirt road. Men were shown digging graves and lowering bodies, one of a child, into the pits while relatives wept.

    "We received about 40 martyrs today, mainly women and children below the age of 12," Hamdy al-Lousy, the director of Qaim hospital, told Al Arabiya. "We also have 11 people wounded, most of them in critical condition."

    The U.S. military has already faced international outrage this month after photographs emerged showing American soldiers abusing Iraqis held at Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

    U.S. military policeman Specialist Jeremy Sivits, 24, was jailed for a year on Wednesday and discharged from the army after he admitted sexually humiliating prisoners in the first court martial of soldiers connected to the case.

    VILLAGE "LEVELED"

    In Al Arabiya's report of the U.S. attack an unidentified man who said he was from the village said there had been an air strike as residents celebrated a wedding.

    "They hit two homes where the wedding was being held and then they leveled the whole village," he said. "No bullets were fired by us, nothing was happening."

    Guests and relatives at Muslim weddings often fire guns in the air in jubilation. In July 2002, a U.S. air strike on an Afghan wedding party killed 48 civilians. A report released by the U.S. Central Command said the strike was justified because American planes had come under fire.

    A U.S. military statement said that during Wednesday's operation, "coalition forces came under hostile fire and close air support was provided." It said troops recovered numerous weapons, two million Iraqi and Syrian dinar, foreign passports and a satellite communications system.

    Kimmitt said there were no indications the victims of the attack had been celebrating a wedding.

    "I'VE LET EVERYBODY DOWN"

    Wednesday's court martial, held at a Baghdad congress center built by Saddam Hussein, was meant by U.S. commanders to prove to Iraqis and the world that justice is being done in an affair Washington says is an isolated incident.

    A plea bargain means Sivits is now expected to testify at courts martial against up to six members of his unit, three of whom were arraigned on Wednesday on much graver charges.

    "We must send a message to other soldiers, to our nation and to the Iraqi people that the American military does not tolerate such behavior," said the prosecutor, Captain John McCabe.

    Sivits, who said he came to "help the Iraqi people get rid of Saddam," sobbed as he apologized to the people of Iraq, the detainees, the court, the army and his family.

    "I've let everybody down. That's not me," he said.

    In Washington, senators grilled top generals in Iraq over whether a drive for intelligence may have prompted abuse.

    Abizaid said on Wednesday mistreatment was more extensive than previously acknowledged. He told the Senate hearing the military had investigated 75 cases of abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan since late 2002. But he said no "culture of abuse existed" and he blamed the physical and sexual intimidation of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison as the "failures of a few."

    The scandal has battered the image of the United States across the Arab world and prompted loud calls from around the globe for Washington to hand over real power to Iraqis.

    U.S.-led forces are struggling against guerrillas, notably militiamen backing rebel Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

    Iraq's top Shi'ite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who rarely makes public statements, called on Sadr and U.S.-led forces this week to pull out of the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala. But Sadr appeared to be ignoring the call.

    Hospital sources said at least eight Iraqis were killed and 14 wounded in renewed fighting in Kerbala on Wednesday near one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest sites.

    The clashes erupted as U.S. tanks advanced near the shrine of Imam Hussein in Kerbala, one of several southern cities where Sadr's Mehdi Army militia rose up in a rebellion U.S. forces have spent weeks trying to crush.

    Loud explosions also echoed across Najaf after dark as Sadr's militiamen launched mortar attacks on U.S. positions.

     
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