- BAGHDAD -- New video footage
has emerged which adds to the evidence that US forces mistakenly bombed
a wedding party in Iraq last week, killing 41 people including women and
children.
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- American commanders insist their attack was on a safe
house used by foreign fighters crossing into Iraq, and that most of the
dead were fighters. But several Iraqi witnesses have come forward to claim
there were no fighters at the scene.
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- The new footage shows a wedding party taking place at
the same site that was filmed after the American attack strewn with wreckage.
Associated Press, which obtained the new footage, said it was a home video
of the wedding. It adds to the evidence of another video which emerged
last week, that shows relatives burying the bodies of babies, children
and women after the attack.
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- Crucially, the new video shows an Iraqi musician playing
the electric organ at the wedding. The same man is recognisable as one
of the corpses shown in the footage of the burials: his face is clearly
shown in both tapes and he is wearing the same beige T-shirt.
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- The new tape shows a man happily cradling a baby on his
knee. That could be one of two dead babies shown in the funeral footage,
wrapped together in a single blanket as a makeshift shroud. It also shows
children playing at the wedding. The tape of the burials shows the bodies
of at least two children, one of them without a head. The Americans have
conceded that up to six women may have died in the attack, but insist that
no children were killed. So far, they have offered no explanation of the
video footage of children being buried.
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- US forces appeared to give a little ground in the face
of the growing evidence. There is to be an investigation of the incident.
"We have not denied anything. We are very open to whatever evidence
that comes forward," a military official was quoted as saying yesterday.
"We still believe that when we got on the ground the intelligence
that caused us to believe there were targets on the ground still remains
the same. That's unchanged."
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- He added: "It could be that there was a wedding
... but there are still a lot of things we don't know which is why we are
going to do the investigation." The main US military spokesman in
Iraq, Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, had earlier said: "Bad people
have parties too."
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- The attack took place in the early hours of last Wednesday
at the remote desert village of Makradheeb, about 10 miles from the Syrian
border. US forces have said for months that foreign Islamic fighters were
slipping into Iraq across the Syrian border to take part in the insurgency
against the occupation.
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- The new tape starts with wedding guests arriving in pick-up
trucks across the desert, among them the highly decorated pick-up truck
carrying the bride. It is possible that US forces mistook this traditional
wedding motorcade for foreign fighters racing across the desert to evade
capture.
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- The large wedding tent which was filmed flattened after
the US attack, and the facade of a house that was shown badly damaged in
later footage are both clearly visible in the wedding party tape. Survivors
have described air strikes that began in the middle of the night without
warning. US forces claim they sent in a ground force first, which only
returned fire after it was fired upon. Witnesses say ground troops did
not arrive until after several hours of air strikes.
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- The new video shows hours of wedding celebrations. It
shows few images of women, but the two sexes are segregated at traditional
weddings in Iraqi tribal society, and it would be considered unacceptable
to film the women. Male children are shown repeatedly with the men in the
video.
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- It contains hours of footage of Iraqi men in white dishdasha
robes performing traditional dances inside the tent. The family of a well-known
Iraqi wedding singer, Hussein Ali, have come forward to say he was performingat
the wedding and was killed in the American attack. He is clearly visible
performing on the tape.
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- Basem Ishab Mohammed, a Baghdad musician who claims to
have been the only one of the musicians at the party to survive the US
attack, said the video was shot on Monday 17 May. The attack took place
in the early hours of Wednesday 19 May, but Mr Mohammed said there had
been two days of celebrations, which is not unusual at Iraqi weddings.
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=524671
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