In Baghdad, a surge in homicides

Hamid Turki winced as the emergency-room doctor inspected a wound in his hip. Under the glare of neon lights, his face was pale.

Mr. Turki was the eighth gunshot victim Mohammed Nouri had seen by midnight Wednesday at the Al Kindi Hospital in central Baghdad. The doctor stepped back from his patient and sighed. "We don't have even 1 percent security now," he said.

Five weeks after US troops entered Iraq's capital, reconstruction has taken a backseat to security. "There are a number of problems, in particular the problem of law and order in Baghdad," L. Paul Bremer, the new chief civilian administrator for Iraq, said yesterday. He appeared to be introducing a get-tough policy, pledging the US would beef up infantry and military police forces.

Mr. Bremer's comments acknowledged a reality Faik Amin Bakr understands all too well. On Wednesday night, the director of the Baghdad morgue counted through his register of violent deaths. There have been 124 over the past 10 days, he says, almost all gunshot homicides. That marks a 60 percent rise over the previous 10-day period, despite claims by US officials here that the security situation is improving.

"We are aggressively targeting looters" as they turn their attention from public buildings to their fellow citizens, said Maj. Gen. Buford "Buff" Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division that has occupied the capital. "We have refocused our soldiers." (see related story)

But in a city where armed carjackings and armed robberies are increasingly common, where many parents do not send their children to school for fear they will be abducted, and where gunfire is heard constantly, violence is claiming growing numbers of victims.

"The trend is going up because there is no control," Dr. Bakr complains. "Everybody can carry a gun in his pocket."

As Turki lay on a gurney in the Al Kindi emergency room, a pressure pad taped over his injury, gunfire crackled on the other side of the hospital wall. Doctors and orderlies sitting outside in the breezy courtyard laughed nervously and shrugged.

An hour later, they jumped up as a Red Crescent ambulance drove in. Flinging the doors open, they pulled out a man in white running shorts and brown T-shirt.

Nadim Zeidan had been walking with his brother and uncle, he told the doctors who inspected his shattered leg, when unseen men opened fire on them.

His uncle was in critical condition at another hospital, shot in the neck. His brother was dead, according to a doctor who had brought Mr. Zeidan to Al Kindi. Zeidan explained that his father had been a prominent member of Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

"There have been revenge killings, and I'd expect we have not seen the last of it," Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, chief of US ground forces in Iraq, warned last week.

Independent observers expect worse. As more and more mass graves are discovered in Iraq, and people find out exactly what happened to their relatives who disappeared, "our prediction is ... there will be a huge spike in revenge killings," says Saman Zia-Zarifi, a researcher here with Human Rights Watch.

US authorities here are also worried that Baathists themselves are "actively and aggressively seeking to defeat, discredit, and disrupt coalition operations," General McKiernan said Wednesday.

Senior US officials have said the Iraqi power grid has been a prime target. Key insulators and power lines have been shot out, and parts have been looted from power plants and relay stations.

"These groups continue to intimidate and terrorize their fellow citizens," McKiernan added.

Most US forces would target them, not ordinary looters, he said. But thieves will henceforth be held for at least three weeks, he announced, rather than being let go after two days, as had been the case. Those using violence will be held until the court system is in a position to try them.

General Blount, however, denied reports that soldiers had been given orders to shoot looters as a deterrent measure. "Unless a soldier's life is threatened, we are not going out aggressively shooting looters," he told reporters.

Page: 1 | 2