Two British soldiers lie dead on a
Basra roadway, a small Iraqi girl – victim of an Anglo American air strike – is
brought to hospital with her intestines spilling out of her stomach, a terribly
wounded woman screams in agony as doctors try to take off her black dress.
An Iraqi general, surrounded by
hundreds of his armed troops, stands in central Basra and announces that Iraq's
second city remains firmly in Iraqi hands. The unedited al-Jazeera videotape –
filmed over the past 36 hours and newly arrived in Baghdad – is raw, painful,
devastating.
It is also proof that Basra –
reportedly "captured'' and "secured'' by British troops last week –
is indeed under the control of Saddam Hussein's forces. Despite claims by
British officers that some form of uprising has broken out in Basra, cars and
buses continue to move through the streets while Iraqis queue patiently for gas
bottles as they are unloaded from a government truck.
A remarkable part of the tape shows
fireballs blooming over western Basra and the explosion of incoming – and
presumably British – shells. The short sequence of the dead British soldiers –
over which Tony Blair voiced such horror yesterday – is little different from
dozens of similar clips of dead Iraqi soldiers shown on British television over
the past 12 years, pictures which never drew any condemnation from the Prime
Minister.
The two Britons, still in uniform,
are lying on a roadway, arms and legs apart, one of them apparently hit in the
head, the other shot in the chest and abdomen.
Another sequence from the same tape
shows crowds of Basra civilians and armed men in civilian clothes, kicking the
soldiers' British Army Jeep and dancing on top of the vehicle. Other men can be
seen kicking the overturned Ministry of Defence trailer, which the Jeep was
towing when it was presumably ambushed.
Also to be observed on the unedited
tape – which was driven up to Baghdad on the open road from Basra – is a
British pilotless drone photo-reconnaissance aircraft, its red and blue
roundels visible on one wing, shot down and lying overturned on a roadway.
Marked "ARMY'' in capital letters, it carries the code sign ZJ300 on its
tail and is attached to a large cylindrical pod which probably contains the
plane's camera.
Far more terrible than the pictures
of dead British soldiers, however, is the tape from Basra's largest hospital
that shows victims of the Anglo-American bombardment being brought to the
operating rooms shrieking in pain.
A middle-aged man is carried into
the hospital in pyjamas, soaked head to foot in blood. A little girl of perhaps
four is brought into the operating room on a trolley, staring at a heap of her
own intestines protruding from the left side of her stomach. A blue-uniformed
doctor pours water over the little girl's guts and then gently applies a
bandage before beginning surgery. A woman in black with what appears to be a
stomach wound cries out as doctors try to strip her for surgery. In another
sequence, a trail of blood leads from the impact of an incoming – presumably
British – shell. Next to the crater is a pair of plastic slippers.
The al-Jazeera tapes, most of which
have never been seen, are the first vivid proof that Basra remains totally
outside British control. Not only is one of the city's main roads to Baghdad
still open – this is how the three main tapes reached the Iraqi capital – but
General Khaled Hatem is interviewed in a Basra street, surrounded by hundreds
of his uniformed and armed troops, and telling al-Jazeera's reporter that his
men will "never'' surrender to Iraq's enemies. Armed Baath Party
militiamen can also be seen in the streets, where traffic cops are directing
lorries and buses near the city's Sheraton Hotel.
Mohamed al-Abdullah, al-Jazeera's
correspondent in Basra, must be the bravest journalist in Iraq right now. In
the sequence of three tapes, he can be seen conducting interviews with families
under fire and calmly reporting the incoming British artillery bombardment. One
tape shows that the Sheraton Hotel on the banks of Shatt al-Arab river has
sustained shell damage.
On the edge of the river – beside
one of the huge statues of Iraq's 1980-88 war martyrs, each pointing an
accusing finger across the waterway towards Iran – Basra residents can be seen
filling jerry cans from the sewage-polluted river.
Five days ago the Iraqi government
said 30 civilians had been killed in Basra and another 63 wounded. Yesterday,
it claimed that more than 4,000 civilians had been wounded in Iraq since the
war began and more than 350 killed.
But Mr Abdullah's tape shows at
least seven more bodies brought to the Basra hospital mortuary over the past 36
hours. One, his head still pouring blood on to the mortuary floor, was identified
as an Arab correspondent for a Western news agency.
Other harrowing scenes show the
partially decapitated body of a little girl, her red scarf still wound round
her neck. Another small girl was lying on a stretcher with her brain and left
ear missing. Another dead child had its feet blown away. There was no
indication whether American or British ordnance had killed these children. The
tapes give no indication of Iraqi military casualties.
But at a time when the Iraqi
authorities will not allow Western reporters to visit Basra, this is the
nearest to independent evidence we have of continued resistance in the city and
the failure of the British to capture it. For days the Iraqi have been denying
optimistic reports from "embedded'' reporters – especially on the BBC –
who gave the impression that Basra was "secured'' or otherwise in effect
under British control. This the tape conclusively proves to be untrue.
There is also a sequence showing
two men, both black, who are claimed by Iraqi troops to be US prisoners of war.
No questions are asked of the men, who are dressed in identical black shirts
and jackets. Both appear nervous and gaze at the camera crew and Iraqi troops
crowded behind them.
Of course, it is still possible
that some small-scale opposition to the Iraqi regime broke out in the city over
the past few days, as British officers have claimed. But, seeing the tapes, it
is hard to imagine that it amounted, if it existed at all, to anything more
than a brief gun battle.
The unedited reports therefore provide
damaging proof that Anglo-American spokesmen have not been telling the truth
about the battle for Basra. And in the end this is far more devastating to the
invading armies than the sight of two dead British soldiers or – since Iraqi
lives are as sacred as British lives – than the pictures of dead Iraqi
children.
Andrew Buncombe: The priority here is
clear: Oil comes before people
Christopher Bellamy: If the cities do
not fall to the Allies, there may be no alternative to siege warfare
Robert Fisk: Raw, devastating realities
that expose the truth about Basra
Patrick Cockburn: Why the Iraqis are
suspicious of their liberators
Robert Fisk: 'It was an outrage, an
obscenity'
The Prophet Muhammad(peace be upon
him) said,
"He who makes peace
between the people by inventing good information or saying good things, is not
a liar." (Sahih Al-Bukhari). Volume 3, Book 49, Number 857:
He also stated: "Part of the
excellence of a human's Islam is that they leave what does not concern
them." Book 47, Number 47.1.3:
FYI:
http://www.masud.co.uk
http://cyberistan.org/islamic/
http://www.it-is-truth.org http://www.discoverislam.com
Start of creation (Big Bang)
[Qur'aan 21:30] Expansion of the universe [Qur'aan 51:41]Water the origin of
life [Qur'aan 21:30] Initial stages of Embryonic existence [Qur'aan 23:12-14]