Local Sheik in Ramadi provides info on attack (Soccer field bombing)

[blitzen]

from what I can gather, the soccer field bombing (16 kids, 3 adults killed) DID happen...but it happened on Monday. The other Ramadi incident (a US "controlled blast" with only minor injuries) happened on Wed. The US, rightly, is denying that their controlled blast killed the kids. But, wrongly, they are also denying that the Monday soccer field massacre took place. The Sheik providing the info says that there are no media around to report events like this.

"Mukeilef said no U.S. military personnel responded to the bombing scene. News of Monday's blast traveled slowly because most reporters have fled Ramadi, a Sunni insurgent stronghold, fearing for their safety.

"We are very isolated," he said. "We don't have any media."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/28/AR2007022801051.html?nav=rss_nation



A community leader in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi provided additional information Wednesday about a deadly car bombing earlier this week that U.S. officials said did not occur.

Raad Sabah al-Mukeilef, a sheik who said he lives about 500 yards from where the bomb exploded Monday, said in a telephone interview Wednesday that he believes members of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq set off the bomb near a playground after being unable to get past a checkpoint that leads to his house, which is near a government building.

Children, ages 4 to 17, were playing soccer when a man at the wheel of a small truck pulled up next to the checkpoint, he said.

"He came in a pickup," Mukeilef said. "Instead of coming in my street, he did it in a small park for children." Mukeilef said he has participated in a U.S.-backed group of sheiks opposed to Sunni insurgents.

Mukeilef's account corroborated information provided Tuesday by Col. Tariq al-Alwani, the security supervisor in Anbar province in western Iraq. Both men said the blast killed 16 children and three women, one of whom died Wednesday from her wounds. Ramadi is the provincial capital.

A U.S. military official denied on Wednesday that children had been killed in a bombing in Ramadi. The U.S. military said it detonated a seized cache of explosives Tuesday elsewhere in Ramadi, injuring at least 30 civilians who were struck by flying glass and debris because military officials misjudged the power of the explosives. Some initial news reports indicated that children playing soccer at that location had been killed.

[Kagemusha]

1. Typical, what's important is "I didn't do it," and nothing else

Too bad for the dead kids.

[youngdem]

2. I figured it happened....My soul hurts for how fucking depraved this crime was, as well.

How dark must your heart be to blow up a field of children playing soccer?