Not a wedding party

[StealthMode]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/22/iraq.main/index.html

Can anyone find and post these pictures that are spoken about?


At Saturday's briefing for reporters in Baghdad, Kimmitt showed photos of what he said were binoculars designed for adjusting artillery fire, battery packs suitable for improvised explosive devices, several terrorist training manuals, medical gear, fake ID cards and ID card-making machines, passports and telephone numbers to other countries, including Afghanistan and Sudan.


There was a tremendous number of incriminating pocket litter, a lot of telephone numbers to foreign countries, Afghanistan, Sudan and a number of others."


"You had over 300 sets of bedding gear in it. You had a tremendous number of pre-packaged clothing -- apparently about a hundred sets of pre-packaged clothing; (It is) expected that when foreign fighters come in from other countries, they come to this location, they change their clothes into typical Iraqi clothing sets."


Anyone find some pics, so we can form a conclusion. I think with this proof, its obviously not some BS propaganda.

[American Patriot]

Maybe the foreign jihadists crashed the wedding.

[scrybe]

Very interesting. I remember seeing a pic of the destroyed tent and some other debris in a pics of the day thread, and it didn't seem right that the US would kill 40 people at a wedding. Good to know we can take this one of the protestors' list.

[M1A2U2]

I bet the media wont report this. They are fine with just saying it was a wedding and not following it up.

[Abbyy]

No problem that target was cache of insurgents' stuff. Problem that a lot of local civilians died due to this operation (even in case they supported those insurgents).

[Secret Squirrel]

doesnt it seem odd to anyone to have 40 or more insurgents in one area/house?

[Abbyy]

doesnt it seem odd to anyone to have 40 or more insurgents in one area/house?

Didn't you have seen video with dead children and women on this place?

[Uncle Sam]

doesnt it seem odd to anyone to have 40 or more insurgents in one area/house?

Didn't you have seen video with dead children and women on this place?

No matter what the U.S. does, they will always show dead women and children. C'mon!

[ariweiner]

Actually the pro-occupation guys are probably right. The Iraqis bombed their own wedding and killed all these toddlers just to blame it on the Americans...

"Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters in Baghdad that U.S. troops who reported back from the operation "told us they did not shoot women and children."...

But an Associated Press reporter in the Ramadi area, at least 275 miles east of Mogr el-Deeb, was able to identify at least 10 of the bodies as those of children.

At the Bou Fahad cemetery outside Ramadi, where the tribe is based, each of the 28 fresh graves contain one to three corpses, mostly of mothers and their young children.

Relatives said they include those of 2-year-old Kholood and 1-year-old Anoud, daughters of Amal Rikad, who was killed; of 2-year-old Raad and 1-year-old Ra'ed — whose headless body was found near his house — sons of Fatima Madhi, who was killed; of Saad, 10, Faisal, 7, Anoud, 6, Fasila, 5, Kholood, 4, and Inad, 3 — children of Mohammed and Morifa Rikad, who were killed."

The first bomb hit the huge goat-hair tent — where male guests were said to be sleeping — at about 2:45 a.m. Wednesday. The barrage didn't stop until sunrise, witnesses said. Women and children were in an adjacent one-story house and the men went to their nearby homes, they said.

After the first missile, Hamdan Khalaf ran in panic and hid in a grassy area.

"In the morning, we went back to the hill and saw people torn apart, attacked by the plane," Khalaf, who was not wounded, told APTN.

"We pulled them out of here," another man told APTN, standing on a pile of stones as he picked up a stained green cloth that looked like part of a young man's shirt. A severed arm lay in the rubble. "We took them to hospital — straight to the fridge," the unidentified man said.

An angry voice in the background of the tape denounced President Bush. "This is his terrorism," the voice said.

The body of what survivors said was the wedding's cameraman was pulled out of the debris Thursday.

The footage also showed women in colorful clothes sifting through the wreckage and carrying away blankets and other goods. Pieces of rockets and bullet casings were strewn across the sandy plain, as were pots and pans and a satellite dish. Partly charred pickup trucks and a water tanker stood in the desert.

The attack left few survivors. About a dozen wounded were taken to the town of Qaem, about 140 miles northwest of Ramadi and 130 miles north of Mogr el-Deeb.

Witnesses, interviewed Thursday by AP in Ramadi, said revelers at the wedding party began worrying when they heard aircraft overhead at about 9 p.m. 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 11 p.m, so the hosts told the band to stop playing and everyone went to bed.

About four hours later, airstrikes began and continued until dawn when 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. Some witnesses said the houses were attacked by helicopters; others said Americans detonated them with explosives.

Kimmitt confirmed that the operation was an air and ground assault. "Those people on the ground identified no children as part of that location that were killed," he said, adding that they reported only adult deaths.

He also referred to the APTN video, shot Thursday in Mogr el-Deeb, as well as separate APTN footage from Wednesday in Ramadi that showed a headless body of a child and other bodies of children.

"What we saw in those APTN videos were substantially inconsistent with the reports we received from the unit that conducted the operation," Kimmitt said. "We're now trying to figure out why there's an inconsistency."