Gorilla’s Guides

UPDATE The toll is still rising from report below At least 4 dead and at least one hundred wounded Sadr city Friday night. So far toll is 20 dead 115 wounded and rising Imam Ali hospital 15 dead and 54 wounded, Sadr Hospital 5 dead and 61 wounded toll will rise as many of wounded not able to be treated

Editor’s Note: Fixed typing twice - first his, then mine

Suheila

The American airstikes killed 4 and left at least 100 wounded The wounded include many women and child the tol is still rising

These US backed, trained, and funded Green Zone Government troops first beat the man then they kill him in cold blood right in the middle of the street.

U.S.-back Iraqi forces are gearing up for a new push deeper into Sadr City that could worsen fighting and displace hundreds, a government spokesman in Baghdad said. “There will be a big offensive soon,” said Iraqi government spokesman Tahseen al-Sheikhly. He did not say when the operation would go forward. In east Baghdad the Iraqi government has readied two stadiums and one former military base to serve as camps for Sadr City residents who may be forced to flee the fighting, al-Sheikhly said. “We don’t want any losses in the civilians,” said al-Sheikhly.

More than 1,010 have died in Sadr City since fighting erupted at the end of March, according to Iraqi government figures offered by al-Sheikhly. Another 2,930 have been wounded, he said. Ongoing fighting continues to worsen the crisis in the vast Shi’ite slum, the Baghdad stronghold of the Shi’ite Mahdi Army militia. Mohammed Kamel Hassan, a volunteer organizer in Sadr City for the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, said up to 500 families have already been displaced from areas around the fighting in recent days. “We have a big movement,” said Hassan, whose organization is working closely with the Iraqi government on new emergency plans. “The situation is very bad.”

Continue reading ‘Baghdad’s Coming Refugee Crisis - TIME’ »

“When Umm Mohammed threw herself over the body of her son who was hit by a sniper’s bullet just outside their house in Sadr City, she would have never thought that the next bullet would kill her,” a local resident of the Shiite slum said.

Editor’s Note: This is the independent Iraki newsagency Aswat Al Iraq’s (Voices of Iraq) English version of their feature in Arabic “مواطنون من مدينة الصدر يروون معاناتهم اليومية بعد اكثر من (40) يوما من المواجهات “. Which means:

“Sadr City Citizens relate their daily suffering after more than (40) days of confrontations”

We have posted the original Arabic immediately below.

For the last six weeks, Sadr City, the stronghold of Mahdi army fighters, has been a scene of uninterrupted clashes between the Shiite militiamen and U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Pointing to Umm Mohammed’s house, Abu Muhannad, a neighbor, added sadly, “Umm Mohammed, tried to draw her son into the house, but her body remained along with her son’s corpse on the sidewalk where their house is located, while neighbors watched powerlessly through their windows as nobody was able to evacuate or call an ambulance.”

The neighbor told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq - (VOI), “We heard Abu Mohammed’s cries for help as he could not recover his beloved due to being unable to walk having lost one of his legs in explosion in Baghdad last year.”

“We all failed him since none of us were able to lend a hand for fear of being killed by another sniper’s bullet,” Abu Muhannad bitterly explains.

After 40 days of severe clashes between followers of the anti-U.S. Shiite Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and U.S. and Iraqi troops, the slum, located in eastern Baghdad with a population of almost 2.5 million, seems rich in stories similar to that of Umm Mohammed.

Abdul Khaliq Swi’adi, 46, who moved his family into a house on the outskirts of Sadr city, said “a U.S. helicopter dropped a bomb on my house while I was inside. Fire consumed the house and I was trembling as I was unable to jump out for fear that the soldiers may shoot me.”

“Without even thinking, I was forced to go outside with my hands up on the assumption that I will not be shot at by soldiers and survive by a miracle,” Swi’adi described.
Sadr City is a densely populated city causing houses to be built attached to each other without any space in between. Parks, unused land, and vast spaces are not readily available in the city.

Ahmed Karim, a Sadr City resident, says “U.S. helicopters fly at low attitude day and night and now and then drop bombs on different places in the city.”
The U.S. army claims that copters and troops target gunmen who take position “on rooftops of the houses.”

Hazim al-Rubaie, 32, a resident of central Sadr City, narrates “a couple of days ago, an old man fell while trying to cross the main street near Dakhel Petrol Station.”
“He was hit by a sniper’s bullet. None dared to approach him to save his life. He bled to death,” al-Rubaie says.

The Iraqi Ministry of Health has been unable to release the civilian death toll of the clashes on the grounds that “the security authorities in the Interior Ministry are the only party authorized to issue such statistics,” the ministry’s media spokesman apologetically clarified to VOI.

To draw the attention of the public opinion to Sadr City’s suffering, 60 MPs representing different parliamentary blocs staged a sit-in late in April. So far however, clashes continue in the city on a daily basis.

Families began leaving the dangerous spots to safer areas outside Sadr City due to the continued bombardment.

Abdel Zahara al-Shwili tells VOI, “I moved my family to my brother’s house in the nearby Shaab neighborhood.”

Saadi al-Lami, a resident of Sadr City’s most violent hot spot, says “most families in section 11 of Sadr City have left their houses seeking safer places.” 

The Iraqi government decided on May 7 to set up safe zones for the displaced from the violence-wracked slum of Sadr city according to a statement by the spokesman for Baghdad’s security plan command.

Aswat Aliraq

Continue reading ‘مواطنون من مدينة الصدر يروون معاناتهم اليومية بعد اكثر من (40) يوما من المواجهات’ »

The main hospitals in Sadr City, received seven dead and (19) wounded all are casulaties of the armed operations being carried out in the city during the past 24 hours.

Imam Ali hospital received:

• 4 dead
• 12 wounded.

Sadr hospital received:

• 3 dead
• 7 wounded.

According to the source at Imam Ali Hospital the police documentation on these deaths and injuries received by the hospital reported that,

they have fallen victim to military operations in the city during the past few hours”