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POSSIBLE WAR CRIMES IN THE 2003 U.S.-LED ATTACK ON BAGHDAD
March 27, 2003


ALYARMOUK HOSPITAL - MARCH 26

On March 26, Cathy Breen and others visited with the following victims at the Alyarmouk Hospital.

Amar*, a seven-year-old boy, had an emergency chest tube to drain blood from multiple shell injuries. His mother, Hannah, died in the direct hit to their house this morning. He is from a farming village on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Mueen*, 8-years-old and the son of a farmer, had a drainage tube due to a wound to the abdomen. The doctor showed the team a plastic bag holding parts of his small intestine that had to be removed during surgery in order to try and get to all of the shrapnel. His father died in that bombing. His six-year-old brother, Ali, was wounded in the head.

Ten-year-old Rusel* was wounded in an explosion outside her door. The team saw the shrapnel in her chest on an X-ray. She too had a chest tube. Her right hand was fractured.

ALYARMOUK HOSPITAL - MARCH 24

On March 24, Cathy Breen and others visited the following victims at Alyarmouk Hospital. Nada Adnan*, a fourteen-year-old high school student, came in with a deep gash and fracture to her right forehead. She also had a hunk of shrapnel in her upper thigh. Some of our folks were present when she and her family were brought into the hospital. Her mother had to be restrained as she was so distraught. A missile had crashed into her uncle's home where they were staying, causing the walls to collapse. Nada's eight-year-old sister had died as a result.

An elderly woman, Fatima, had fallen in fear during the bombing and fractured her hip. She had already had surgery for the hip. Her ankle was in a cast and her knee was wounded.

ABDULLAH HAAMID HASSAWI FAMILY

On March 27, visited the home of the Abdullah Haamad Hassawi family in Al Tujjaar, a residential neighborhood in North Baghdad. Next door to their home, the team saw damage to windows of the Balquis Secondary School for Girls. In the Hassawi family home, the team saw rubble from walls on the second floor roof patio in the courtyard below, as well as hundreds of marks in the outer walls made from small, uniform, cubed, metal pellets. In an upstairs room, there was a large blood stained mattress on the floor.

Family members reported that Moneed, 25, and his 23-year-old wife, Sahar, and their 6-year-old son, Quiser Muhweb, had been sitting together on that mat when metal fragments from the bomb came in through the window. These fragments broke the glass and hit and injured them all, breaking the legs of the mother and son. They were taken to the Al Nooman Hospital in the Aldemia area.

The large number of pellet marks in the walls, from top to bottom, but not on the floor of the patio and downstairs courtyard, and the low level of damage done to the building, suggest that a fragmentation bomb may have exploded about eight feet above the roof patio and sprayed pellets around into the walls, and that bomb fragments flew into the window, hitting the three injured, and that the blast blew out the windows of the school next door. This bomb may have been an anti-personnel weapon. The tiny, but heavy, pellets are currently being examined to determine if they are made with depleted uranium.