Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 26, 1991 TAG: 9103260238
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: OUTSIDE SUQ ASH-SHUYUKH, IRAQ LENGTH: Long
Packed into dilapidated buses and cars and jammed onto cattle trucks, several thousand Iraqi civilians and deserting soldiers fleeing from the holy Shiite city of Najaf and dozens of other towns that had mounted an uprising against Saddam told tales of horror.
"Saddam has destroyed Iraq," screamed a young man from Najaf who would not give his name. "He is killing the cream of Iraqi men by the thousands."
Ibrahim Mehdi Ibrahim, 32, said he had deserted as an officer from the Iraqi army five days ago in disgust as a tank-and-helicopter attack intended to mop up the remnants of the crushed Shiite rebellion turned into a massacre in which Republican Guards lured families out of their homes and fields to fire artillery at them.
"There are hidden crimes that will make your hair go white," Ibrahim said. The Republican Guard, he said, was attacking the people, trying "to harvest them, the wheat with the chaff, with helicopter gunships, while they hid in the fields."
Several men standing around him said Iraqi tanks rolling into their towns had a motto inscribed on them: "No Shiites After Today."
Another refugee, Alaa Hashem Qazem, cried, his face contorted with grief and the fatigue of a five-day trek on foot. He had lost three children, he said.
"We went to fight with the resistance in Abu Skheir" - a village outside Najaf, he said. "Our families stayed at home. When I went to get them, I found my house on the ground. It was shelled. I found my [3-year-old] son Raad with his head severed."
Jawad Mohammed, 32, who said he had deserted as an Iraqi officer, told of seeing a woman, running with her child in her arms, hit by a shoulder-fired rocket that cut her in two.
Several U.S. Army paramedics told of treating refugees for wounds caused by weapons and beatings. The paramedics were deployed along the refugee route to a small field clinic near the Kuwaiti border.
Spc. Daryle Osby, 22, from Meridian, Miss., said he had treated people "beaten with pipes, with burns and a lot of kids beaten with barbed wire. A lot had families killed off. A couple of girls 12 and 13 were beaten on the face with fists or blunt objects." Others, he said, had bullet wounds or serious injuries from munitions and grenades.
The American soldiers are providing food, water and compassion in addition to medical care. Many are clearly awed by the switch in their own role from combat soldiers to humanitarians.
"I don't understand this damn war, I really don't. First we fight 'em, then we're helping 'em," said Sgt. Kevin Pfister, 31, from Gulliver, Mich. "Now we're like a referee caught in someone else's civil war."
At a small bridge about 5 miles east of Suq ash-Shuyukh, the last in a string of townships overrun by pro-Saddam forces two days ago, hungry men with hard, hollow eyes begged for political asylum and for food and water.
American soldiers began turning back throngs of youths 120 miles northwest of the Kuwaiti border who were attempting to surrender as prisoners of war with the hope of escaping to any other country.
At every U.S.-manned roadblock from Safwan at the Kuwaiti border to Suq ash-Shuyukh, angry, desperate men, some weeping openly, recounted the massacre of their families and townspeople.
Mohammed, who said he deserted his unit on Feb. 28, described a massacre of women, old men and children. He said his wife and three children were among the victims. More than 50 other men from Najaf told of losing wives and children.
"This was the ugliest of executions. Families that wanted to leave, they were surrounded and mowed down on the street. We saw with our eyes how they brought the wounded out of hospitals and shot them along with the doctors treating them," Mohammed said. "When the Iraqi army entered one week ago, the families that had fled the fighting returned with their children. They lined them up against walls and executed them."
Qassem Shaer Oueiss, 22, who said he had deserted from the special forces of the Republican Gurads three months ago, said that in Qadissiyah and Hillah, south of Najaf, "artillery and phosphorous bombs were being used against the opposition, women and children included."
"Iraq is forsaken, deserted, three-fourths of its people are fleeing," Oeiss said.
"At the beginning, we shelled families inside Qadissiyah, then they brought over helicopters to finish the job," Ibrahim said. "I told myself, `I don't want to do this.' I laid down my weapons five days ago and joined the resistance. It is unconscionable that a Muslim, a human being, should hit his people.
"I don't care," he said, hushing up comrades who were advising him not to give his name. "I don't care; my mother and baby brother were killed by Saddam's troops; my life is not dearer than theirs. Let me tell the truth; the world must know."
In Washington, meanwhile, German Finance Minister Theodor Waigel called on U.S. officials Monday for a strict accounting of Persian Gulf War costs with an eye toward a partial rebate of Germany's share if the allied contributions prove to be more generous than necessary.
Waigel first raised the issue at a meeting Monday morning with Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady, and is expected to bring it up again today with President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker.
Also on Monday, United Nations officials, responding to reports that Saddam skimmed billions from Iraq's economy and hid the dollars, said they don't know the whereabouts of any such funds.
by CNB