More killings of civilians by US-led forces in Iraq

The most recent is the suffocation of 10 men in Baghdad on July 10 after they were left locked in an Iraqi police commando van in the intense summer heat. The case was reported by Al Jazeera, the BBC and other networks the following day. Further details were published by US newspapers on July 12. The attention had forced the Iraqi interior ministry to announce that an investigation will be held.

The circumstances leading to the men’s detention points to the arbitrary character of the arrests and killings being carried out by US and Iraqi government troops as they seek to suppress a popular and intractable insurgency against the occupation.

In the course of a gun battle in the western suburb of Amariyah, the circumstances of which are not clear, three men from the suburb of Abu Ghraib who were seeking work on a nearby construction site were wounded. Their workmates took them to Baghdad’s Noor hospital, where one of the injured men died.

Shortly after, police commandos arrived at the hospital. In one of the more detailed accounts, the hospital director told the New York Times that the police accused the men of being involved in the attacks, at which point some of them attempted to run. “Eventually the commandos captured them all, including the injured men, and took them away,” the doctor said. “That was all we knew until we heard that the dead bodies of most of the men were delivered on Monday [July 11] to the Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad.”

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/jul2005/iraq-j14.shtml