Iraqi survivors tell of air strike carnage

Survivors of a US attack on Iraq’s border with Syria say a bomb scored a direct hit on a tent where wedding party revellers were sleeping.

The survivors said the wedding party was in full swing, with a band playing tribal music and the guests had just finished dinner when, at about 9pm, they heard the roar of US warplanes.

Fearing trouble, the revellers ended the festivities and went to bed, but about six hours later, the first bomb struck the tent.

“Mothers died with their children in their arms,” said Madhi Nawaf, who survived the attack on Wednesday in Mogr el-Deeb. Up to 45 people died – mostly women and children from the Bou Fahad tribe.

“One of them was my daughter,” Nawaf said. “I found her a few steps from the house, her two-year-old son Raad in her arms. Her one-year-old son, Raed, was lying nearby, missing his head.”

In Baghdad, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, coalition deputy chief of operations, said yesterday the US military would investigate after Iraqi officials reported the survivors’ story.

However, Kimmitt said the military maintained the target was a safe house for infiltrators slipping across the border to fight coalition soldiers in Iraq.

Kimmitt said several shotguns, handguns, Kalashnikov rifles and machine guns were found at the site. And he said soldiers also found jewellery and vehicles that indicated the people were not wandering Bedouin but “town dwellers”.

“Ten miles from the Syrian border and 80 miles from the nearest city and a wedding party? Don’t be naïve,” Marine Major General James Mattis told reporters in Fallujah. “Plus, they had 30 males of military age with them. How many people go to the middle of the desert to have a wedding party?”

But members of the Bou Fahad tribe say they consider the border area part of their territory and follow their goats, sheep and cattle there. They leave spacious homes in Ramadi and roam the desert, as far as 250 miles to the west, in spring time.

Smuggling livestock into Syria is also part of a herdsman’s life – although no one in the tribe admitted that.

Weddings are often marked in Iraq with celebratory gunfire. However, survivors insisted no weapons were fired on Wednesday, despite speculation by Iraqi officials that this drew a mistaken American attack.

“They’re lying,” Nawaf said of the US military. “They have to show us evidence that we fired a shot or were hiding foreign fighters. Where are the foreign fighters then? Why kill and dismember innocent children?”

Nawaf and more than a dozen men from the Bou Fahad tribe transported the dead to Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, which includes Mogr el-Deeb.

Twenty-eight graves were dug in the tribe’s cemetery outside Ramadi, each containing one to three bodies. A wake was held yesterday at a home in Ramadi.

Nawaf’s brother, Taleb, lost his wife, Amal, and two daughters, two-year-old Anoud and one-year-old Kholood. His wife’s body was found clutching the two children, survivors said.

All the men interviewed insisted there were no foreign fighters in Mogr el-Deeb. The US military suspects militants cross the area from Syria to fight the Americans, and it is under constant surveillance by American forces.

“We would know if any outsider comes to our area,” said Hamed Abdul-Razaq, another survivor.

Sheikh Dahan Haraj, the tribe’s chief who was also at the wedding, said that if the Americans suspected terrorists, ”why not seal off the area and make sure they were indeed foreign fighters?”

Survivors said they became fearful when they heard aircraft overhead about 9pm on Tuesday.

Then came military vehicles, which stopped about two miles away from the village and switched off their headlights. The planes were still overhead at 11pm.

“We began to expect some kind of catastrophe,” Nawaf said.

They decided to end the celebration, and the bride and groom, Azhar Rikad and Rutba Sabah, went into their tent.

About 25 male guests who came from Ramadi for the wedding and five band members from Baghdad stayed in the main tent. All the women went to bed in an adjacent one-storey stone house.

Many men, including Nawaf, drifted away to their nearby homes.

The first bomb struck the main tent at about 2.45am, the survivors said. Among those who died was Hussein al-Ali, a prominent wedding singer from Baghdad. The second bomb struck the stone house, killing everyone inside.

“They didn’t even spare one child, one elderly,” said the 54-year-old Nawaf.

Survivors said shells rained down until nearly sunrise.

Two helicopters landed and about 40 soldiers searched the house where the women had stayed and a second, vacant house.

Soon after, the two houses were blown up – although witnesses offered differing accounts of how. Some said the houses were attacked by helicopters. Others said the Americans detonated them with explosives.

“They asked us no questions,” said Adel Awdeh.

Some of the men tried to approach the Americans but were driven back by gunshots, the survivors said. The troops took money and jewellery the dead women had brought for the party, survivors said.