US shootings give Iraqis reason to hate

By PHIL REEVES in Fallujah

It is the kind of messy scene that the Pentagon's publicists had dearly hoped to avoid.

Large patches of congealed blood. Discarded shoes scattered in terror. Angry Iraqi neighbours and wailing relatives, recounting a tale of the random killing of young men whose only crime was to demand that their new, heavily armed, masters leave the neighbourhood.

The troubles plaguing the American and British occupation of Iraq have deepened sharply after United States troops opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators, killing between 10 and 13.

The people of Fallujah, a dust-blown Sunni Muslim trucking town 55km west of Baghdad where the killings occurred, will forever see the events as an atrocity, not to be forgotten.

Late last night it was reported that US troops had again fired on an angry crowd in Fallujah. The city's mayor said two people were killed and 14 injured.

Major Michael Marti, of the US 82nd Airborne Division said that soldiers travelling in a vehicle convoy had opened fire after shots were fired at them from a crowd of people. The crowd had been protesting outside a US command post about the earlier killings.

They happened when a crowd of about 100 demonstrators descended on a school which had been taken over by about 100 US soldiers four days earlier. The ostensible reason for the march was to demand the troops depart, as the locals wanted the school to reopen. Bound up with it, though, were wild rumours that the Americans had been peering into their homes - and at their women - with night-vision goggles.

The marchers were carrying one solitary banner of Saddam Hussein - a gesture to the fact that it was the dictator's birthday, but a tactic chosen principally to annoy the Americans.

Some Iraqis, both sides agree, were firing in the air in celebration somewhere in the vicinity. Iraqi eye witnesses say that the US troops were frightened, and wildly opened fire.

The Americans say they were fired on, and acted in self-defence against a crowd in which 25 people had guns. But there are strong doubts over the US version - and an absence of evidence on the ground. Fifteen-year-old Ahmed al-Essawi, who was shot in his arm and leg, says he saw no guns.

"All of us were trying to run away. They shot at us directly. The soldiers were very scared. There were no warning shots, and I heard no announcements on the loudspeakers."

No guns among the crowd were seen by Hussein Ali Awari, a labourer who lives across the road in House No 7. He says that when the shooting started panic-stricken demonstrators, some injured, piled into his courtyard for cover including a boy of about 17 who later died. He still had a pile of their shoes.

These people may, of course, all be lying. But the hard physical evidence at the scene must also be factored in.

The Americans - a company from the 84th Airborne Division, deployed late last week to stop looting and a roaring local arms trade - fired at the crowd from Fallujah Al-Ka'at primary and secondary school. This is a pale yellow, utilitarian two-storey concrete building, about the length of seven terraced houses. They were shooting out of the front upper floor and from the roof at people across the road - a distance of several dozen metres.

According to Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Nantz, they were being shot at and stones were thrown. They tried to disperse the crowd with loudspeaker warnings, but in vain. Under threat, they fired back.

Yet there are no visible bullet holes in the front of the school building, let alone the tell-tale sprays of gouge marks that denote a firefight. The place is unmarked. By contrast, the houses opposite - No 5, 7, 9, and 13 - are punctured with dozens of machine-gun holes, including some that have torn away lumps of concrete the size of a hand, and punched holes as deep as the length of a biro.

Asked about the curious absence of bullet holes, Nantz said that the Iraqi fire had gone over the soldiers' heads. We were taken to see two bullet holes in an upper window and some marks on a wall, but they were on a different side of the building.

There are other troubling questions. Nantz said that the US troops were being fired at from a house across the road. Several light machineguns were produced, which the Americans said were found at the scene. If true, this was an Iraqi suicide attack - in itself, a significant development.

Anyone attacking a US post from a fixed position within 35m - which is literally like firing over the road at the neighbours - would have no chance of survival.

The US forces claim that there were 25 guns within the crowd. This, too, would have required the demonstrators to have had a death wish, or a mass fit of stupidity. Iraqis have learned that if they fail to stop their cars quickly enough at a checkpoint, they will be shot.

To walk, at night, up to a US Army outpost brandishing guns and chanting anti-American slogans would have been an act of madness.

But these facts - all of which point to a frightened, panicky, trigger-happy force that opened fire because it did not feel its base was safe enough - matter less than the larger political implications of such events.

In the past week, US forces in Iraq have been shot at daily. Stone-throwing at troops - a highly symbolic form of "resistance" borrowed from the Palestinians - has become commonplace. The language of the American forces is beginning to sound grimly familiar.

They complain of having to shoot at stone-throwers, because the Iraqi youths might - and, they allege, on at one occasion in Ramadi three days ago, actually have - thrown grenades among the rocks.

They talk of people firing at them from within the ranks of civilian demonstrators. They live in dread of car bombs and suicide attacks. They say most Iraqis like them, but there is a small element lodged within the fabric of Iraqi society which is determined to make trouble.

It has all been said before, by their allies, the Israelis. And no one has found a solution.

Iraq reconstruction

* Syria, Turkey want the United States to swiftly withdraw troops from Iraq after a temporary administration is set up in Baghdad.

* Russia wants an extension of the United Nations humanitarian oil-for-food programme for Iraq.

* French President Jacques Chirac confirms he was ready to consider a Nato peacekeeping role in Iraq but says it would require a UN mandate.

* US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham visits region to meet oil and government ministers from Doha, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

* World Bank chief sees Iraq reconstruction costing up to US$3 billion ($5.3 billion) a year.

* At a meeting in London, archaeologists from around the world vow to help Iraq rebuild its shattered national heritage.

- INDEPENDENT

Herald Feature: Iraq