The Amiriyah Shelter Crime: A Disgrace for America

America has committed many crimes against the Iraqi people, particularly in 1991 when the dead and buried criminal George H.W. Bush launched his war against Iraq. This war was sparked after the U.S. provoked the Kuwait War, a conflict through which America wanted to weaken Iraq and dominate the region. One of the most heinous American crimes, after those perpetrated against Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Vietnam, is the bombing of the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad, on Wednesday, Feb. 13, 1991, at 4 a.m.

Fearing the bombing during Bush’s war on Iraq, innocent citizens took refuge in that shelter, which accommodated more than 1,000 people overnight. The American authorities were certainly aware of this during that horrific war. However, two American planes struck the shelter at dawn. At that hour, it was difficult for people, most of whom were women, children and the elderly, to escape from the attack because they were asleep. After America received the map of the shelter from the Finnish government or the Finnish construction company, one of its planes first hit the shelter with a missile in order to make a hole in its ventilation system. Since the shelter was nuclear-proof, it was impenetrable unless a gap was made at its weak point. This could only have been found using the map of the shelter provided by the construction company. Immediately after the first attack, another cowardly plane hit the shelter with a bomb that went inside the building through the hole. This caused a rise in temperature, reaching thousands of degrees Celsius, with emissions of suffocating gases and a nuclear-like storm. As a consequence, people were burned alive, and their bodies melted and stuck to the walls of the shelter. More than 400 Iraqis were killed in the bombing, most of whom were children; only five or fewer people survived.

If America’s recklessness and killing of children go unpunished, the Lord will not let it get away with its crimes. God will no doubt punish America and the criminals led by Bush. That barbaric crime reflects cowardice. When a war kills women and children, it becomes a war of cowards and craven mercenaries. It is also proof that America’s war was only against the Iraqi people, not for the liberation of Kuwait. The Amiriyah shelter is in Baghdad, not in Kuwait, and those who were killed in the shelter were innocent children, not soldiers in Kuwait or representatives of Iraqi leadership at the time. Not content with its crime, America went on killing a million Iraqi children during the siege, during which it prevented the entry of medicines, especially those used to treat cancer. This disease was the result of depleted uranium that the U.S used during that cowardly and demonic war.

Hence, we call on the relevant ministries, such as the ministries of Culture, Interior and Defense, the Municipality of Baghdad and civil society organizations, to turn their attention to the Amiriyah shelter. It should become a museum that will remain a witness to that crime, and document the pictures and stories of the martyrs in a civilized manner, as Japan did for Hiroshima. He who respects his citizens, their lives and their dignity, is respected, and he who does not care is not respected by anyone, even by America itself. Turning the Amiriyah shelter into a museum that documents this crime is a national duty of the government and everyone. The Amiriyah shelter will remain, regardless of the length of time, a witness to America's crimes against Iraqis.