Baghdad Traffic Congestion

Task Force 20, the special unit hunting Saddam and his inner circle, botched a raid Sunday night on a house in another part of Baghdad [leaving] five civilians dead in the shattered wrecks of cars. Several residents said the Americans erected a single roadblock leading to the house but failed to prevent motorists from straying into the fire zone by quiet side streets. They accused the troops of machine-gunning two cars, killing the occupants. ?The cars came down the road. They didn?t know the Americans were here. They were normal civilians and wanted to go home,? a witness said. ?They [U.S. soldiers] opened fire right away.?

Witnesses said two other people traveling in a sport utility vehicle had also been shot by soldiers who chased their vehicle after it left the scene. … The intensity of the shooting was evident from the condition of the Toyota, which had at least two dozen bullet holes in its front and rear windshields. Witnesses said three of the passengers, including an older woman who was wounded but not killed, were immediately taken from the car, but the body of the driver remained in the vehicle for some time.

The killings started as the troops were searching the building and as motorists approached the barbed wire which the soldiers had placed without warning across the road. Witnesses said the first car contained at least two men. “The second contained two children about 10, their mother and their father who had been wounded in the Iran-Iraq war – he was a cripple,” a local shopkeeper told me. “They all died. The man’s legs were cut in half by the bullets,” he added. A third car then approached the Americans, who opened fire again. One of the occupants fled, but the other two remained in the vehicle and were killed. When another car arrived US troops riddled it with more bullets and it burst into flames. It is believed that two people were inside and both were burnt to death. “The Americans didn’t try to help the civilians they had shot, not once,” a witness said. “They let the car burn and left the bodies where they lay, even the children. It was we who had to take them to the hospitals.”