“Insurgents Shot to Death” Versus “Massacre of Civilians”

“I have never seen the Iraqi resistance forces responding to us in such an organized manner and on a large scale before.” (A U.S. force’s commander)

“The exaggerated confrontation of the U.S troops against the ambush of a small number of Iraqi insurgent has caused the locals indignant to rise in revolt.”(The chief of Samarra Police Station appointed by U.S interim government)

“We have shot 50 insurgents to death” (U.S. armed forces)

“Where are the corpses?” (News reporters)

What is the truth to the Samarra battle, in which the U.S. military declared on Monday to have achieved the greatest success since the end of major battle in Iraq? The explanations of the battle scene such as insurgents’ ambush and the U.S. forces’ pay-back operation varies so much according to the people that even the “fruits of battle” is now under suspicion.

Insurgents Shot to Death, but No Corpse Found Out– The battle began when the U.S. convoy delivering the new Iraqi currency, “Dinar,” to two local banks in Samarra were suddenly ambushed by Iraqi insurgents. Their tactics changed from “sudden in and out pop” to a “concentrated attack” from various directions around the vehicle. Sporadic battle continued for over three hours between the insurgents and the U.S. forces.

When the battle finished, the U.S. forces addressed, “The insurgents who wore the uniforms of the former Fedayeen Saddam ambushed the U.S. convoy in Samarra. 46 insurgents were killed, 18 wounded, and 11 taken prisoner.” However, they corrected it to 46 killed and one prisoner several hours later.

When the news reporters counted up the number of corpses based on the reports from Samarra Hospital and Iraqi police, they discovered there were only eight corpses left over at the battlefield. The corpses were even not wearing the uniform of Fedayeen Saddam.

The U.S. commanders explained and said, “The insurgents might have taken their colleagues’ corpses away.” But when AFP raised a question that “if it were 60 insurgents ambushing the U.S. convoy, then most of them may have died during the battle. It does not seem reasonable that the remnants of the ambush could have run away with their colleagues’ corpses.”

The U.S. brigadier general Kimmit, who explained the details of the battle in Baghdad as the reporters pounded him with questions, remarked, “My explanation on the first stage of the battle may have been a bit mistaken,” stirring up even more suspicion than before.

Was it an organized battle or sporadic resistance? – “The insurgents gathered 30 to 40 people together to gang up on us, shooting rifles from Islamic temple, alleyway and rooftops,” remarked one of the field commanders, Captain Andy Deponai, adding, “They seemed to have gone through a disciplined combat process.” Based on this report, Kimmit assessed that “The insurgents might have set up a central command system.”

However, Iraqi Police in Samarra said to the reporter of AFP and the Financial Times that, “The U.S. soldiers, who were attacked by one or two insurgents, began firing their rifles even at civilians although the insurgents had run away. The U.S. made the incident bigger than it really was.”

The foreign news passed on that one Iranian pilgrimage who visited Al Askariya temple of the Sunni was killed by the U.S. during the incident and other Iraqi people were wounded.

In addition, they passed on the verbal evidences of the locals that one woman lost her son by the U.S. bomb which landed on her garden and several Iraqi civilians were attacked by rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) from the U.S. forces. Samarra is located in the “Sunni Triangular Area,” one of the strongholds of the insurgents. In June, U.S. soldiers shot well-wishers at a wedding ceremony in this area, stirring up the anti-U.S. feelings. The attacks from the insurgents have occurred so often in the recent three weeks that the U.S. forces have prepared a counterattack operation, making use of eight combat tanks and four armored combat vehicles. The U.S. forces firmly denied the reports of foreign news, saying, “We have never received any reports that innocent civilians were killed or wounded so far,” but the locals in Iraq have sworn an oath to retaliate for this attack.

Rae-Jeong Park ecopark@donga.com