FROM: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s879894.htm
Last Update: Sunday,
June 15, 2003. 5:28am (AEST)
US army raid kills
82 fighters near Iraq-Syria border
Eighty-two fighters,
including one foreigner, were killed earlier this week in a massive
US army raid on a desert training camp near the Syrian border, witnesses
have said.
The fighting erupted
on Thursday at dawn at the camp, which included an arms dump, and
lasted 13 hours, residents from the nearby village of Rawa,
350 kilometres north-west of Baghdad, said.
They said the site, used
as a training ground by die-hard Saddam loyalists, was bombed and that
a gun battle shortly followed between US troops and the fighters.
"In total 82 people
died in the camp," including at least one non-Iraqi, said Sheikh
Gharbi Abdul Aziz, imam of Rawa's main mosque, just a few kilometres
from Sahl.
He said he had taken
part in the burial of the 82 bodies "some
were in pieces or totally burnt," he said.
Fifty
bodies were found all in a line, he said.
Another seven had
been handcuffed and shot in the forehead, chest or in the back of the
head.
The imam said villagers
had carried 60 bodies from the camp and seven more from the nearby site
where a US helicopter came down the same day.
They were all buried
at Rawa cemetery.
At the camp, an AFP correspondent
saw 15 more graves marked by wooden sticks.
Bottles had been stuck
in the sand over the graves bearing the names of those who have been
identified.
Osama Mahfudh Salem was
said to be from Yemen, Abd as-Sattar Mohammad from Fallujah, a conservative
Sunni Muslim town west of the Iraqi capital, which has seen sustained
anti-US violence.
Bloodstained mattresses
and pieces of discarded weaponry stood as a
testament to the remorselessness of the pre-dawn fight.
"When the bombing
stopped Thursday and when the Americans left, residents came and picked
up loads of flesh and gore," said Abd al-Hadi Mahmud, a local garage
owner.
"Some
bodies were completely torn to pieces: feet, legs, skulls."
"When they came
to the village, they never did us any harm. They
were polite," he added.
"What I saw was
unspeakable. I can't get over the sight of all these young people dead.
Some were handcuffed," said Abd al-Wujud,
a driver who helped carry the corpses outside the camp.
Residents also said the
US army had fired at least six cluster bombs.
US Central Command said
a US Apache helicopter was apparently shot
down by hostile fire in western Iraq on Thursday but that
its two crew members were not injured.
"Two additional
Apache helicopters assisted in engaging irregular forces in the vicinity
of the downed aircraft," a Centcom statement said.
FROM: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s879894.htm
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