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Iraqi Schools Closed, U.S. Urges Agencies To Stay
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U.S.
troops detain Iraqis following Monday attacks
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Additional
Reporting By Subhy Haddad, IOL Correspondent
WASHINGTON,
October 28 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – As the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Tuesday, October 28,
prepared to pull out of Iraq after a series of massive attacks, the
United States urged international aid agencies not to leave the
war-ravaged country because their work is needed.
The
ICRC said Monday it "will begin tomorrow to fly out expatriate
staff and then we'll see how we can continue our work with our Iraqi
staff," Pierre Gassmann, head of the ICRC delegation in Baghdad,
told the website of Germany's ARD public television.
The
organization, which has some 35 foreign staff in Iraq and 800 Iraqi
workers, would continue not to ask for military protection, Gassmann
said.
"If
we decide to ask for military protection, we will be exactly where the
enemy is seen - at the side of the coalition troops," Gassmann
was quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) as saying.
The
bombing at the ICRC office, which killed at least 12 people including
two local staff, was one of a spate of almost simultaneous bombings
across Baghdad that left 42 people dead and more than 200 injured,
according to the latest hospital estimates.
Gassmann
said the strategy of trying to distance the organization from the
U.S.-led troops occupying Iraq had failed.
"The
people who did this are against everything foreign. They see no
difference: everything that isn't Iraqi is lumped in with the
occupying troops and fought," he said.
The
ICRC would remain on the spot but reduce its work, "for example
on water supplies, help for hospitals, distributing medicines."
"The
problem is just that there isn't a civilian Iraqi administration yet
that can fulfill such tasks," he added.
The
attack on the ICRC was reminiscent of a similar
bombing on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad,
which killed 22 people on August 19, including Annan's top envoy for
Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
Staff
at the agency's headquarters in Geneva were in a state of shock,
fearing that it had been deliberately targeted in the attack.
Other
aid agencies rallied around the ICRC, which prides itself on its
neutrality and has stayed in Iraq for more than two decades and
through several wars, to provide help while others had intermittently
pulled out of the country.
"We
are very shocked by this terrorist attack because the target of the
attack was the very symbol of humanitarian aid in Iraq," said
Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
"It
means that one of the interests of these people is to expel every
foreigner," she told AFP.
The
ICRC normally relies on discreet contact with all sides in a conflict
to try to make sure its delivery of medical and sanitary aid, and
assistance to prisoners, is seen as impartial, officials said.
Security
for its foreign and local employees worldwide also depends heavily on
the internationally-recognized symbols, the red cross and the red
crescent.
‘Needed’
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"They
are needed.. if they are driven out then the terrorists win,"
Powell (AFP)
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In
the meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell appealed for
international aid agencies to work with U.S. authorities to find a way
to stay despite its dangers.
"They
are needed, their work is needed and if they are driven out then the
terrorists win," he said after meeting at the State Department
with Sheikh Hamdan Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the deputy prime minister of
the United Arab Emirates.
Powell
allowed that the agencies "have to balance that desire to do the
job and stay with their security needs”, but called on them to seek
the assistance of Paul Bremer, the head of the U.S. civil
administration in Iraq, and General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of
U.S. forces in Iraq.
Powell
acknowledged that Monday's bombings, which followed the shelling on
Sunday of the Baghdad hotel where U.S. officials reside, had been bad
for morale, but vowed that the United States would stay the course in
Iraq.
"Today
was a difficult day and the last 24 hours have been very
difficult," he said.
But
Powell's comments may not be helpful, and unlike U.S occupation
authorities and the military, aid workers cannot surround themselves
with intense security, said the BBC NewsOnline.
A
clear line from Washington that agencies should stay could appear to
compromise their neutrality, it added.
The
prospect of key humanitarian organizations further scaling back, may
add to the growing feeling in the U.S. that the rest of the world has
not been properly involved in sharing the cost of rebuilding Iraq,
said the BBC NewsOnline.
Critics,
including Democratic presidential candidates, said the surge in
violence only bolstered their view that post-invasion Iraq was a mess.
But
President George W. Bush talked tough in the face of Monday's deadly
blasts, insisting that violent challenges would not change the U.S.
mission in Iraq.
"The
more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will
react. And our job is to find them and bring them to justice," he
said.
Schools
Closed
Following
the Monday attacks, the Iraqi Education Ministry ordered all schools
indefinitely closed” to keep safe all students in these turbulent
times.
In
a separately-related incident, the U.S. troops killed 7 Iraqis, hours
after the Monday attacks.
U.S.
soldiers who were in a convoy that suffered from an attack by an
explosive charge on a bridge in the western town of Fallujah Monday
evening, opened sporadic fire on a number of Iraqis killing 7 of them
and wounding several others, eyewitnesses told IslamOnline.net
Tuesday, October 28.
They
added that the U.S. convoy lost 3 of its armored vehicles, but they
gave no further details about human losses among the U.S. soldiers.
Fallujah
had witnessed dozens of resistance attacks on U.S. occupation forces
that killed and injured dozens of them since the end of the
U.S.-British invasion of Iraq last April.
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