THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

But, we leave and more 12 year old boys die than need to. The insurgents will start a civil war and untold thousands could end up in more mass graves. Our prescence there, no matter how grotesque the left finds it saves lives.

There is no reason to believe whatsoever that weapons were fired at the helicopters.

you mean other than the pilots reporting they were fired upon?

You were there now? ... You know that no one in the crowd fired at the helicopters?

You know nothing except what the propaganda machines tells you. ...but it will never change the fact that you know NOTHING about what really happened because you WEREN'T THERE!

Fatal error on Baghdad's front line
By Adrian Blomfield on Haifa Street, Baghdad
(Filed: 13/09/2004)

Haifa Street is one of the most violent places in Baghdad. Its abandoned high-rise buildings provide ideal cover for Iraqi insurgents.

Nobody knew this better than Mazen al-Tumeizi, who lived here and had witnessed countless street battles. Yesterday he was woken by gunfire. He watched American forces advancing down the street in the pre-dawn gloom, on a mission, apparently authorised by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, to root out insurgents.

At one point, a Bradley fighting vehicle was hit by a car bomb, injuring two American soldiers. Three others were wounded when insurgents lobbed hand grenades at other soldiers trying to evacuate them.

During a lull in the fighting, Tumeizi ventured out to join a crowd gathering round the burning Bradley. The Americans had pulled out but Tumeizi knew it was only a matter of time before they would come back.

"Let's get this over with," he said to Seif Fouad, a Reuters cameraman who had become a firm friend in the 14 months Tumeizi had worked as a reporter in Iraq and often filmed his dispatches for al-Arabiya, one of the two television stations he worked for.

As Fouad started rolling the camera, the crowd behind Tumeizi, many of them children, grew more restless.

Some jumped on top of the burning Bradley while others clapped and cheered. "He was nervous," recalled Rajih Khalil, Tumeizi's housemate who had grown up with him in the Palestinian town of Hebron.

"He finished his piece to camera very quickly." Sighing with relief, the three began to move away from the scene. But he had made a small mistake that cost him his life.

"Suddenly Mazen stopped," said Khalil. "He hit his head and said 'I'm so stupid. I've forgotten to do the sign-off'." Cursing good-naturedly, the three returned to the Bradley and Fouad got out his camera and began filming.

None of the three heard the helicopters until it was too late. As Tumeizi spoke into the camera, the first gunship opened fire. Within seconds, all three men had been hit.

The footage released by al-Arabiya shows him pointing to the smoke billowing out of the Bradley moments before the helicopters began firing.

"It gave no warning," Khalil said. "Everything happened so quickly. We fell to the ground. I heard Mazen shout 'I'm going to die! I'm going to die!'

"I crawled across to him. I could see it was bad. He was on his front and his back was open. He couldn't breathe properly. 'It's all right,' I said. 'Don't be afraid. Help is coming.' I don't know if he heard me. He couldn't speak. He was moaning quietly."

With a broken leg, shrapnel injuries to his stomach and head wounds, Khalil could do little to help his friend. Fouad too was badly hurt while, further away, Guardian and Getty Images reporter Ghaith Abdul Ahad was nursing a head wound. "Around us were others dead or injured. People ran away but then some came back to help."

As they did, the helicopters made another pass again opening fire, Khalil said. "People trying to help us were wounded or ran away. After a minute, the helicopters came back and fired again. They came three or four times."

Within 10 minutes of their arrival at hospital, Tumeizi was dead. An 11-year-old girl brought in at the same time also died, one of 13 killed in the incident, according to health ministry officials.

For much of the day yesterday, Baghdad echoed to explosions as the capital came under its most intense barrage of mortars and bombs in five weeks. At least nine died.

At the same time, insurgents launched a co-ordinated attack against the notorious Abu Ghraib prison at the western edge of the city.

Several mortar shells exploded outside the prison complex about 6am. About 20 minutes later, a vehicle packed with artillery shells crashed through the chain-link fence on the outer perimeter and exploded.

To the south, in the town of Hilla, three Polish soldiers and three Iraqi guardsmen were killed in separate attacks. West of the capital, US marines continued an offensive in the so-called "Sunni Triangle", killing 10 insurgents in Ramadi.

Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi prime minister, vowed: "We are adamant that we are going to defeat terrorism. We intend to bring them to justice."

According to media reports, the fighting started at about 0440 (0040 GMT) in Haifa Street, a notorious snipers' alley on the west bank of the Tigris that is out of US military control.

The Bradley was hit by a roadside bomb after it had raced to the scene following mortar bombs being launched at the nearby Green Zone, seat of the Iraqi government and US forces.

Crowds gather around destroyed Bradley armoured vehicle in Haifa Street
Some people were celebrating the attack, others were curiously onlookers
Gun battles reportedly raged around the wreck for about an hour. The attackers fired on the American rescue crew as they evacuated the stricken vehicle.

The fighting had clearly died down by the time the journalists arrived before 0800.

Press photographers took pictures of the wreck and the Iraqis around it, including young men waving the flag of Abu Musab Zarqawi's al-Qaeda-linked group Tawhid and Jihad. One youth climbed onto the Bradley and thrust the flag pole down the narrow barrel of its 25mm gun.

Most of the onlookers did not appear to be celebrating the "kill", just standing around curiously staring at the burning wreck.

In the first explanation of events offered by the US military early on Sunday evening, the helicopter was said to have blown up the wrecked Bradley "to prevent looting and harm to the Iraqi people".

A second explanation came a few hours later suggesting that air support had been called in by the Bradley crew to prevent looting, but the helicopters were fired on from the ground.

In a phone call from Baghdad on Monday, the US military was unable to clarify why none of the TV footage or press pictures showed armed people at the scene or recorded any gunfire.

Mr Khatib, who has asked for a more information from the US military, is particularly concerned that Mazen Tumeisi seemed to have been standing more than 50 metres from the wrecked Bradley.

You mean other than the pilots reporting they were fired upon? maybe next time they won't gather around a burning US military vehicle, or maybe next time they will stop the insurgents from even attempting to disable a US military vehicle.

You call it murder, I call it an unfortunate incident.

The official US military statement significantly shortens the timescale of events as reported by separate international news agencies.

Instead of three hours after the ambush, when the people on the scene were mainly curious locals and journalist, the US says the helicopter strike was at 0730, 40 minutes after the Bradley was attacked at 0650.

then a crowd of Abu Musab Zarqawi supporters

If and when Kerry becomes CiC and decides we should fight his more sesitive war, then maybe we can send a girl scout troop down and they can hook up a tow truck and bring teh Bradley back to base.

How about someone, maybe even Kerry, says 'hmm. Maybe we can do some things differently so they won't want to blow our troops up.' That's what Kerry means by a more sensitive war on terror.