36 killed in Baghdad air raid, says minister

IRAQ’s health minister yesterday said 36 Iraqis had been killed and 215 wounded in yesterday’s allied air strikes on Baghdad.

And he accused the US and Britain of deliberately targeting civilians to break the will of the Iraqi people.

“They are targeting human beings in Iraq to decrease their morale,” Omeed Medhat Mubarak said. “They are not discriminating, differentiating.”

The allies have denied targeting civilians and said it takes extraordinary measures to avoid hurting non-combatants.

In Baghdad, witnesses said an unknown number of people were killed and scores were injured in an attack yesterday on a complex where employees of the Military Industrialisation Authority of Iraq live.

The site, in the al-Youssifiah area 12 miles south of the capital, produces weapons. Yesterday afternoon, a loud explosion was also heard in central Baghdad, possibly caused by a missile striking an unknown target about 700 metres from the Information Ministry, witnesses said.

There was no immediate information about damage or casualties.

An anti-aircraft gun located on the roof of the ministry opened fire on the missile, witnesses said, and scores of journalists fled the building, which also houses a press centre.

Yesterday, 14 people were reported killed in a residential northern neighbourhood of the city. Iraqi officials blamed the blast on US cruise missiles.

“So you see, the American and British mercenaries are targeting civilians regardless of their age,” Mubarak said. “They targeted shops and small public-sector installations.”

Mubarak said the total number of dead and injured since the US-led war on Iraq began a week ago is more than 4,000, including 350 dead.

He also accused US and British forces of dropping cluster bombs on civilian targets.

“In Najaf, they destroyed a medical centre,” he said. “They bombed an ambulance and killed its driver.”

But American officials in Qatar said it was entirely possible that an Iraqi missile was responsible for yesterday’s marketplace explosion.

US Brig Gen Vincent Brooks said there was an Iraqi missile battery near the neighbourhood and that Iraqi has been using old missile stock fired with guidance systems turned off.

“We think it is entirely possible that this may have been an Iraqi missile that went up and came down, or, given the behaviours of the regime lately, it may have been a deliberate attack inside of town,” Brooks said.

Meanwhile, one of the fiercest sandstorms the people of Baghdad ever saw gave way to blue skies yesterday, but the clear weather only raised fears among the inhabitants that they were in for a day of intensive bombing.

They were worried allied forces would try to make up for two days during which the storm grounded US warplanes and slowed down the advance on the Iraqi capital.

A witness said a missile hit an area not far from a television building and the Information Ministry early yesterday. Buildings shook, but there did not appear to be any damage.

But parts of Baghdad appeared almost normal, with hardly a shop closed, hundreds of shoppers milling around, and traffic jams.

Iraqi TV was still on, but the picture was poor, and it was unclear whether the signal was being received outside Baghdad.

Jomaa al-Qurishi, 29, was selling newspapers in Abu Nawas Street, a road famous for its art galleries and fish restaurants, on the east bank of the Tigris River.

“I have been selling newspapers at this spot for 13 years and no bombs are going to stop me,” he said.