- FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) -- U.S.
paratroopers fired on a house in this center of anti-American resistance,
killing an Iraqi couple, orphaning their five children and enraging neighbors
who insisted the pair were innocent.
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- "This is democracy? These corpses?" neighbor
Raad Majeed asked at the hospital, gesturing at the remains of the couple,
on gurneys covered with bloody sheets. "It's a crime against humanity."
The 82nd Airborne Division said its paratroopers acted after receiving
"two rounds of indirect fire" around 9 p.m. Tuesday.
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- "Paratroopers from our Task Force engaged the point
of origin with a grenade launcher and small arms, causing two personnel
to flee into a nearby building, which was also engaged and destroyed,"
division spokeswoman Capt. Tammy Galloway said in a statement.
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- "The building was searched and no weapons or personnel
were found. Upon questioning, civilians in the area reported two dead personnel
were taken to a nearby hospital," the statement said.
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- Civilian deaths in the counterinsurgency campaign have
enraged many Iraqis at a time when the U.S.-led coalition is trying to
win popular support. On Wednesday, the coalition announced it was freeing
506 of 12,800 prisoners in a goodwill gesture also aimed at encouraging
more Iraqis to come forward with intelligence against anti-American guerrillas.
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- Officials offered rewards for the capture or information
confirming the deaths of 30 more wanted Iraqis, putting bounties of $50,000
to $200,000 on their heads. That is in addition to bounties for the 13
remaining fugitives at large from the original 55 most- wanted Iraqis whose
pictures appeared on a deck of cards.
-
- There's a bounty of $10 million on the head of the most-wanted
man since Saddam Hussein's capture, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, one of the
ousted dictator's chief lieutenants.
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- In Fallujah, neighbors said U.S. soldiers were on a routine
search for suspects and arms when they were fired on. The paratroopers
then fired at the house of Ahmed Hassan Faroud.
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- Associated Press Television News film showed a wall of
the house collapsed into rubble of concrete bricks and two walls splattered
with blood that neighbors said belonged to Hassan, 37, and his wife Suham
Omar, 28. They said the couple's five children were in bed in an adjoining
room and survived Tuesday night's attack uninjured. Fallujah is about 30
miles west of Baghdad, the capital.
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- "They just brought in their tank and fired at their
house from 200 meters (220 yards) away," Majeed said. "What did
these people do wrong?"
-
- Tuesday's attack came as coalition officials said they
would become "increasingly aggressive with the die-hards," while
simultaneously making conciliatory gestures to moderates or fence-sitters.
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- Elsewhere in Iraq, a British soldier died in a training
accident in southern Basra, bringing the toll for British troops to 53,
a British military spokesman said.
-
- In the northern city of Kirkuk, insurgents struck an
Iraqi police vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade Tuesday night. One
officer was killed and two were wounded in that attack, one seriously,
police said. Rebels regularly target police and other Iraqis who cooperate
with the U.S.-led occupation authorities, as well as the oil installations
that victims of the attack were assigned to protect.
-
- Also in Kirkuk, a grenade hit the office of the Kurdistan
Socialist Party, wounding one person and causing slight damage, police
said.
-
- Kurdish party offices in Kirkuk have come under attack
several times recently as fears mount amid demands from Kurds that the
oil-rich city become part of the autonomous state that they have controlled
in northern Iraq under British and U.S. aerial protection since the end
of the Gulf War in 1991.
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- Syria's vice president on Wednesday accused Israel of
trying to divide Iraq. Syria, Turkey and Iran all are concerned Kurds may
start demanding an independent state to include parts of their countries
that hold Kurdish populations.
-
- "The most dangerous thing that threatens Iraq is
that some foreign forces, particularly Israel, are seeking to break up
(Iraqi) national unity," Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam told reporters
after meeting with an Iraqi tribal delegation.
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- The Iraqi delegation, from the large Jbour tribe, called
on all international forces to work to "rid Iraq of the (U.S.-led)
occupation and prevent partition, sectarianism and racism in the country."
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- Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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