- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Rasoul
Hammed Najeed stood outside his home sobbing uncontrollably for his five-year-old
son, killed while playing near a busy Baghdad vegetable market when an
air raid struck.
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- "After this crime, I wish I could see (U.S. President
George W.) Bush in order to cut him to pieces with my teeth," he cried.
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- Another man, identified as Saad Abd Qasim, stood as if
in a trance, unable to speak.
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- Friends told Reuters his wife, his child and the wife
of his son had been among the 50 to 60 people Iraqis say were killed in
the raid.
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- "We heard a plane flying over us. We saw a rocket
coming in our direction, and then we heard the explosion. My shop was shaken
but, thank God, I am safe," said Eyad Abadi, 30.
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- The raid took place late on Friday in the run-down, working-class
district of Shula in northwest Baghdad, inhabited mostly by Shi'ite Muslims.
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- Most of the one-story shops in the immediate area were
demolished. The ground was covered with blood and broken glass.
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- This correspondent saw 10 corpses. He also saw a crater
about two meters (yards) wide and half a meter deep. Many cars nearby were
badly damaged.
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- Abu Dhabi television said U.S. cruise missiles may have
hit the market.
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- The U.S. military blamed another explosion earlier this
week in a Baghdad residential area on an errant Iraqi missile. It had no
immediate comment on Friday's raid.
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- TOO MANY WOUNDED
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- There were scenes of panic and confusion at the nearby
Al-Noor Hospital as relatives tried to locate or comfort injured loved
ones.
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- "Is this the humanity that Bush is talking about?
He has no mercy at all. May God make him fail," said Ali Kadhin, whose
three-year-old son was badly injured in the attack.
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- Dr Osama Sakhari said he had counted 55 people killed
in the raid and more than 47 wounded. Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed
Saeed al-Sahaf said at least 58 people had been killed.
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- Sakhari said he had counted 15 children among the dead.
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- "The hospital couldn't accommodate all the wounded.
We had to send some of the wounded to two other hospitals in Baghdad,"
Sakhari said.
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- He added that a child had just died in his arms.
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- "I ask Bush and (British Prime Minister Tony) Blair
to imagine how they would feel if their child died in their arms,"
he said.
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- Bush and Blair say their 10-day-old war is aimed at removing
President Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership and ridding the country
of weapons of mass destruction. Baghdad denies it has any such weapons.
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- But the television pictures of Friday's attack, broadcast
across the Arab world and beyond, are sure to damage further their efforts
to convince ordinary Iraqis that the military onslaught is not aimed against
them.
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- "I think Bush and Blair are angry because the name
of the market hit is called 'Victory' (Nasr in Arabic). I think this is
why they raided it," said Sadhil Jabbar Hussein, nursing a large cut
in his leg.
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