- BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraqis wounded
in a US-led air strike that smashed into a crowded Baghdad market on Friday,
killing 30 civilians, pledged allegiance to Saddam Hussein and vowed to
fight coalition forces advancing on the Iraqi capital.
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- "Many of my friends were killed and others wounded,"
said 20-year-old Saddam Hussein Jassem, whose shared birthday with the
Iraqi president ensured he was given his name.
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- "We are all ready to sacrifice ourselves for Abu
Uday," one of Saddam's nickname, a defiant Jassem told AFP, his upper
body covered in a bloody dressing where his left arm had been ripped off.
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- Flashing a "V" for victory, Jassem said the
Iraqis would make the "walls of Baghdad a cemetery" for advancing
US and British forces.
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- In another crushing blow for the coalition battle for
the hearts and minds of the Iraqi population, a missile crashed into An-Nasser
market in the Shiite Muslim neighbourhood of Al-Shula in northwestern Baghdad
on the Muslim day of rest.
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- Dr. Haqi Razzuqi, head of the nearby An-Nur hospital,
said 30 people had been killed. "Most of the victims are women, children
and old people," he told AFP, adding that many of the wounded were
in serious condition.
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- Some other doctors at the hospital said 52 people had
died. The entrance of the hospital morgue was crammed with dozens of sobbing
parents who had come to identify the dead.
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- An AFP correspondent at the scene saw nine charred corpses,
including those of two small children.
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- Leila Jassem's 16-month-old daughter Saja lay still on
a hospital bed, on a drip and respirator. Two of Saja's siblings were killed
and a third injured in the raid, which came when the children were playing
in the family house.
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- "I am not crying because we are a strong people,
thanks to God and our president," the 24-year-old mother said. "I
ask (US President George W.) Bush why he's killing all these innocent people
when we have done nothing to him."
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- A nurse holding the baby's hand comforted her: "Saja
will survive."
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- Outside, hundreds of people gathered around the crater
left by the coalition projectile witnesses said landed around 6:00 pm (1500
GMT).
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- Most victims were shoppers at the packed market, the
witnesses said. The blast overturned stalls and shattered shop windows.
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- At the nearby Shiite Muslim Mussa al-Kazem Mosque, bodies
of the "martyrs" were being cleaned for burial, which happens
within 24 hours according to Muslim tradition.
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- A dozen or so wooden coffins were lined up on the ground.
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- Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles Owens, spokesman for
the US command headquarters directing the war on Iraq, later said he had
no comment on the market raid. "We're still trying to learn the truth
of the matter," he said.
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- The incident comes amid what Iraq says are mounting civilian
deaths from pounding by coalition warplanes on Baghdad to topple the Iraqi
regime.
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- US officials have accused Saddam of placing military
targets in residential neighbourhoods, and said the missiles that slammed
into an apartment complex in the capital on Wednesday, killing at least
14, may have come from Iraq.
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- Iraqi anti-aircraft gunners have regularly opened fire
during bombardments by the US and British war planes, and it is not known
if their shooting may have knocked missiles off course.
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- Earlier Friday, anti-aircraft gunners shot down an unmanned
US spy plane which then slammed into the roof of a Baghdad house. It was
unclear if any casualties had resulted from the incident.
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- But the images of the latest deaths, splashed on the
Arabic-language satellite networks, which have offered groundbreaking coverage
of the war, will be certain to enflame anti-US sentiment that is already
close to boiling.
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- The United States has come under intense criticism over
the war, which has intensified as coalition troops have faced fierce resistance
from Iraqi troops in the south of the country.
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- Washington and London say Saddam and his inner circle
will be ousted from power by war's end, and the chairman of the US Joint
Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, insisted Friday the US war plan
was "brilliant."
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