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Scores of Iraqis Killed in US Air Strikes
BAGHDAD,
August 30, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – At least 56
Iraqis were killed Tuesday, August 30, in multiple US air strikes in the
western Iraqi city of Qaim, near the Syrian borders, according to Iraqi
sources.
"At
least 56 people were killed in the air strikes carried out by US forces
near Qaim close to the Syrian border," an Iraqi security source
told Agence France Presse (AFP).
Mohamed
Al-Aani, a hospital official, told Reuters that at least 35 people were
killed in a US strike on one house and another 12 in a strike on a
second house.
Dr.
Hamdy Al-Alousy, director of Qaim hospital, told the Doha-based
Al-Jazeera that women and children were among those killed in the US
raids.
He
maintained that the city is repeatedly the target of random US air
strikes.
Qaim
lies in the Euphrates valley, which US forces claim serves as a route
into Iraq from Syria for foreign fighters launching deadly attacks
against US occupation forces.
Guided
Bombs
The
US military said the air strikes, which included 500-pound GB-12 guided
bombs, began about 6:20 a.m., targeting hideouts of Abu Musab
Al-Zarqawi's Al-Qaeda group in Husayba and Karabila, close to Qaim on
the Syrian border.
A
US military statement said that four bombs were dropped on a house
occupied by "terrorists" outside the town of Husayba.
It
added that two more bombs targeted a second house in Husayba, occupied
by claimed Al-Qaeda operative Abu Islam.
"There
was a total of three strikes targeting terrorist safe houses... Abu
Islam (a reported Al-Qaeda operative) and several associates are
believed killed," a US military spokesman in Baghdad said.
A
US spokeswoman said some of Abu Islam's associates then drove around six
km (four miles) to a house in Karabila, AFP said.
"Around
8:30 a.m., a strike was conducted on the house in Karabila using two
precision-guided bombs. Several terrorists were killed in the strike but
exact numbers are not known."
US
occupation forces have been launching a sweeping offensive on Qaim since
May 7, on claims of searching for followers of Al-Zarqawi, the most
wanted man in Iraq.
Following
a US offensive on the city last March, local inhabitants complained
about the stench of dead bodies laid on the streets or beneath the
rubble of houses as a result of the fierce US offensive.
The
incessant US attacks on the city pushed hundreds of Iraqi families to
flee the city to escape the ongoing US offensives.
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