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August 22, 2005

Original Article (English)

(Note from Azzaman: For nearly a week early this month, U.S. troops attacked the city of Haditha, 270km northwest of Baghdad. The city’s 90,000 residents were targeted by massive shelling from helicopters, tanks and artillery. This article is written by a resident of Haditha who saw what went on in one of its neighborhoods. The writer’s name has been withheld for security reasons.)

It was Friday, August 5, when the bombs started falling on our city. They came like heavy rain and their thunder broke the silence and early morning calls to prayer from the mosque’s minarets.

A Marine Inspection on the Road to Haditha in February

The Pentagon called this new military offensive Operation Quick Strike. There were warplanes, tanks, explosions and shrapnel. Many of us began reciting verses from the holy, Koran pleading with the Almighty to save us from the U.S. fire, as we had nowhere to hide and nothing to defend ourselves with.

We were subject to a terror attack by the United States. The operation could be called nothing but terror.

On that same day the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution condemning terrorist attacks in Iraq. The government’s U.N. representative in New York, Samir al-Sumaidi, himself born in Haditha, was quoted over the radio as thanking the council for adopting the resolution.

When the shelling subsided, U.S. commanders ordered their Marines to storm the city. They searched Haditha quarter-by-quarter, house-by-house and arrested scores of young men and even women and prevented us from holding Friday afternoon prayers.

In one bloody incident I saw the Marines kill two unarmed people. One of them was in his bed in the Sheikh Hadid district, where Sumaidi was born. The second was killed as he strolled in his garden.

More residents began falling. In our area alone, the Marines killed five people, all of them unarmed and having no connection to the insurgents.

For us, those killed by the United States are martyrs. The long line of Iraqi martyrs is growing, as innocent blood flows out or from the Iraqi artery the U.S. has torn.

Sumaidi, other senior Iraqi officials and the world have said nothing of the five innocent people killed by U.S. troops in our neighborhood. However, the world knows of the victims and Sumaidi and his government know who the murderer is. But no one utters a world of protest.

A Car Bomb and the Consequences in Hadith Last Year; Marines Prepare for Battle in February

Still there are many who would like us to stand behind the government and give the U.S. and its Marines a chance.

Rather, we would have rallied behind Sumaidi and his government if they had stood up to denounce the American occupation and the U.S. military’s random and barbaric killing of innocent people.

What does the world expect from us? What does the government expect? Do they want us to thank the United States for sending its Marines, Apache helicopters and F16s to destroy our homes, kill our children, detain our women and break our bones?

We have set our own standards on how to deal with them. Since the government supports the U.S. occupation forces,  whose fire tears the bodies of our martyrs into pieces, there is nothing it can do to regain our trust.

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