A nice summing-up of the current near-complete lack of information about how many Iraqis, armed or otherwise, we’ve killed and wounded so far is given in this piece from the Financial Times: Civilian casualty figures cause concern. Coming at the same issue from another perspective is this story from the same paper, giving a street-level view of some US marines’ rules of engagement as applied in fighting today in Baghdad: Eyewitness: “The marines shot anything they considered a threat”. An excerpt from the latter article:

We heard screaming from the alley. None of the US troops moved. If it had not been for Mohammed Fatnan, an Iraqi translator with the UK’s Channel 4 News, the Americans would not have treated the casualties. Mr Fatnan crossed the road outside the palace under the guns of two marine armoured fighting vehicles and came back carrying a young girl, Zahra Abdel-Samii’, bleeding from the head.

In the alley, a man who had run on to his balcony upon hearing gunfire had been shot dead. Men wailing “There is no God but God” were hauling him into the back seat of a car in a blanket.

Minutes later, the explosion of a rocket-propelled grenade thundered through the palace garden, then came bursts of heavy gunfire.

A white Mitsubishi van roared along the main road that runs beside the palace wall, the driver slumped over the wheel, unconscious or already dead. The van veered off the road into a wall.

Mr Fatnan and two marines ran across the road to help a woman injured in the arm and foot and a young man, her son, shot in the head.

The dead driver had not understood the warning shots meant to tell him to stop.

The marines had had enough of journalists filming. We walked slowly along the road outside the palace back to our van.

This entry was posted by jbc on Thursday, April 10th, 2003 at 4:18 pm and is filed under war. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.