Enemy tactics blend cruelty, cunning
By Sharon Schmickle -- McClatchy Newspapers
Last Updated 6:20 a.m. PST Thursday, March 27, 2003
CAMP VIPER, Iraq -- Marine Sgt. Steven Zakar said he saw boys about 7 years old armed with AK-47 rifles standing in front of Iraqi troops on the banks of the Euphrates River.
Marine Cpl. Stephen Hammond said he saw a hospital replete with fake patients and doctors used as a headquarters for Iraqi forces.
Three Iraqi prisoners of war said their officers shot them on suspicion they planned to desert. Other Iraqis told of shooting their officers in order to desert.
Eyewitnesses from the front lines -- Iraqis and Americans alike -- bitterly accuse President Saddam Hussein's forces of committing possible war crimes and human rights atrocities in order to maintain control -- of troops and civilians -- in south-central Iraq.
The response from those close to the firefights is outrage and a grim resolve to finish off Saddam's regime.
"Any war crime you can think of is happening," said Zakar, from Toms River, N.J. "They have no respect for human life, and in turn I have no respect for them. ... This is wrong."
Zakar and other observers gave their accounts while being treated in a tent emergency room run by Charlie Surgical Company's Shock Trauma Platoon 8.
The Iraqis consistently fight in civilian clothing, blending in with residents of the cities that have been hot spots in the war, many witnesses said.
"I have never seen an Iraqi fighter in uniform," said Marine Cpl. Stephen Hammond, 22, of Glendale, Ariz. He spent three days in fierce battle for control of bridges spanning the Euphrates River at the city of An Nasiriyah. He told his story from a bed in a surgical tent where he was treated Wednesday for a gunshot wound to his right leg.
Hammond caught the bullet during a battle for a low-rise, sand-colored building that was marked as a hospital. American forces watching the hospital had seen people come and go dressed as patients and medical staff, he said, but they had reason to suspect it was a military stronghold.
When Marines stormed the facility Tuesday and took control, he said, they found Iraqi military uniforms, documents giving American positions and other intelligence information.
Hammond takes offense at the deception. The Iraqis are killing Americans, he said, by violating internationally recognized rules of behavior in combat, such as restrictions on attacking civilians and hospitals.
"They tried to take advantage of our rules of engagement," Hammond said.
The rules bar attacks on civilians and on facilities such as hospitals. "They would put on civilian clothing and walk out of the hospital as if nothing was happening inside," Hammond said.
Meanwhile, three Iraqi prisoners of war who were treated for gunshot wounds this week said in separate interviews that their attackers were their own officers, said Lt. Kolan Wright, a physician who oversees the ward where the prisoners are recovering under Marine guard. Wright sat in on the translated interviews, he said.
The report jibes with a statement by at least one other wounded Iraqi prisoner who was captured elsewhere.
"It doesn't surprise me," said Lt. Cmdr. Ethan Bachrach, an emergency room physician and the officer in charge of the shock trauma platoon. "The rumor has been that the penalty for desertion in the Iraqi army is death."
There also have been unconfirmed reports, he said, that skilled professional officers were sent into the region to hold rag-tag bands of nonprofessional fighters in line.
Apparently the Iraqi troops fully understand the stakes. Zakar said that he helped guard and search three dozen Iraqis who surrendered.
"They said they killed almost all of their officers to get away and then walked two days across the desert to surrender," he said.
Zakar was treated Wednesday for wounds from a grenade in a hip and arm after a battle in An Nasiriyah, where he had been guarding the south side of a bridge spanning the Euphrates, a strategic point in U.S. plans to move supplies ****her north in Iraq.
On one occasion, he said, Iraqi forces assembled in front of a row of houses on the north side of the river and opened fire on the Marines.
Standing in front of the Iraqis was a boy who appeared to be about 7 years old brandishing an AK-47 rifle, Zakar said. He had seen other boys in similar positions, he said.
"They don't appear to know what they are doing with the weapons, but they have managed to fire them," he said.
Despite Iraqi attempts to intimidate civilians, Zakar said, some Iraqis have befriended U.S. troops.
"We were positioned near an area where there are farms," he said. "The farmers were very nice to us. They told us they were anti-Saddam. They would offer us tea every time they saw us. All they seemed to want to do is to work their land and be left alone."
Sharon Schmickle is a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
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this'll go over REAL well.
joedoe
