Maqarr adh-Dhib
| Maqarr adh-Dhib | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| location | |||
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| Coordinates | 34 ° 0 ′ N , 40 ° 12 ′ E | ||
| Country |
 Iraq
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| Governorate | al-Anbar | ||
| Basic data | |||
| height | 440 m | ||
Maqarr adh-Dhib ( Arabic مقر الذيب, DMG Maqarr aḏ-Ḏīb ) is a village in western Iraq near the Syrian border.
Maqarr adh-Dhib massacre
On May 19, 2004 , 42 people were killed in a US helicopter attack , including 11 women and 14 children. This has been confirmed by Hamdi Nur al-Alusi, the manager of the nearest hospital. Western journalists saw the children's bodies before they were buried. Eyewitnesses report that those killed were wedding parties, but the US Department of Defense in Washington said it was a targeted attack on a base of insurgents who first shot at US troops.
There had been a wedding reception in the village the day before . The US military stated that the traditional rifle shots had been misinterpreted as an attack on the helicopters. This is controversial as the attack started at 3:00 a.m. when most of the guests were asleep. Originally, the US military also denied that children had been killed. A video cited was criticized for the fact that the mountains in the background are different from those in the vicinity of Maqarr adh-Dhib.
One survivor, the groom's 30-year-old sister-in-law, Ms. Schihab, said the American soldiers kicked the bodies to see if they were still alive. “I fell in the mud and an American soldier kicked me. I pretended to be dead so he wouldn't kill me. My youngest child lived next to me. "
At a press conference, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said : “There were no signs of a wedding: no decorations or musical instruments were found, no large amounts of food or leftovers as one would expect at a wedding reception, no gifts. There was no wedding tent. ”He showed photos of rifles, machine guns, foreign passports, bedding and other items, and said the lack of identification of the dead showed that“ a highly dangerous meeting of high-level anti-coalition forces ”was underway. US Major General James N. Mattis also denied at a press conference that a wedding party had been bombed.
The following day, Associated Press Television News (APTN) obtained a copy of a video of the wedding ceremony filmed by cinematographer Yasir Shawat Abdullah, who had been assigned to document the ceremony. Among the dead were popular Iraqi musicians Hussein al-Ali and his brother Mohaned al-Ali . After the appearance of the wedding video, the US government had to explain because it supported the representations of the villagers.
Chronicle of events
- 9 p.m .: the first fighter planes can be heard. The eyewitnesses deny that shots of joy were fired at the wedding celebration.
- 11 p.m .: Headlights from military vehicles are approaching the village, these lights are switched off around 3 kilometers away. Airplanes can still be heard. The wedding celebration is over, 25 male guests and 5 musicians who have come to stay in the main tent, the women and children in a house nearby.
- 2:45 am: A first bomb hits the main tent, the second hits the house where the women and children sleep - everyone is killed, including the wedding couple.
- Artillery shells hit the village until sunrise. About 40 US soldiers flown in by helicopter search the bombed house and steal money and jewelry from the women who were killed. After that, the house and another one was again shot at by attack helicopters.
Web links
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/may/24/iraq.usa (Engl.)
- http://journals.aol.com/bmiller224/OldHickorysWeblog/entries/1295 (Engl.)
- http://www.geoffarnold.com/mt-archives/000097.html (engl.)
- Peter Symonds: " More Pentagon lies about the bombing of an Iraqi wedding party " World Socialist Web Site (engl.)