Large civilian casualties: Bush administration bombs outskirts of Baghdad

Edited by Peggy Chan

U.S. warplanes dropped more than 18,000kg of bombs on more than 40 targets in the southern outskirts of the capital, Baghdad.

The U.S. military had said in a statement on Thursday that the intensive bombing by B-1 bombers and F-16 fighter jets on the village of Arab Jabour was aimed at al-Qaeda targets.

However, a local Sunni tribal leader told Al Jazeera that many civilians were feared dead and 300 families had fled after the offensive began earlier in the week.

Abdallah el-Jbouri, who was on a visit to Syria, said that at least 40 houses and the main road out of the village were destroyed.

He said that residents had told him that people were believed to be trapped under the rubble of the ruined buildings and the injured were unable to reach hospital because of the damage to the road.

The noise of the bombing was greater than anything the villagers had heard before, even during the US-led invasion, el-Jbouri said.

The U.S. military said the bombing was part of a nationwide operation against al-Qaeda, named Phantom Phoenix, that had been launched by U.S and Iraqi forces.

A U.S. military statement said: "Thirty-eight bombs were dropped within the first 10 minutes, with a total tonnage of 40,000 pounds.

"More than 40 targets were hit after precision air strikes destroyed reported al-Qaeda safe havens in Arab Jabour."

The statement did not explain how 38 bombs had destroyed 40 targets.

The air raid was followed by a ground attack that led to 12 arrests and the discovery of two houses used to torture kidnap victims, an Iraqi army officer told the Associated Press news agency on condition of anonymity.

The Iraqi army officer, whose unit is in the Arab Jabour area, said that the air strikes led to the burning of several citrus groves and the destruction of two houses used by armed fighters. He said soldiers confiscated documents and weapons including AK-47s.

Moahmoud Chiad, who lives on the edge of Arab Jabour, told AP that many military checkpoints had been set up in the area and Iraqi security forces were ordering people, through loudspeakers, to stay home.

"After this, we saw US helicopters hovering over the area while the sounds of jet fighters were also heard," he said.

"Minutes later, there was the sounds of big explosions. We saw fire and smoke coming out from some groves. Then, the gunfire crackled in the groves, but it ended by noon."

Nine US soldiers were killed in the first two days of the operation, including six who died in an explosion as they entered an explosives-laden house in the Diyala province on Wednesday.

At least 273 people were recorded to have been killed in December 2007, in the Diyala province alone.

Meanwhile, a World Health Organisation (WHO) study has found that about 151,000 civilians were killed between March 2003 and June 2006 in Iraq, following the US-led invasion.

The WHO study drew on an Iraqi health ministry survey of nearly 10,000 households, five times the number of those interviewed in a disputed study by John Hopkins University in 2006, which said more than 600,000 Iraqis had died in the three-year period.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

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