Shrine to the Victims of Al-Amirya

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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What has been achieved by a devastating war and 11 years of draconian sanctions on Iraq? a few million Iraqis dead, 1 million children starving, thousands of children suffering from cancers in DU contaminated areas, millions of Iraqis living in abject poverty… War and sanctions have brought nothing but untold misery to millions of ordinary Iraqi civilians. Tragedies such as the attack on the Al-Amiriya bomb shelter also remind us that it is the innocent people that will ultimately suffer in any war.

Shrine to victims of ‘tragic error’](http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/iraq2002/89776_iraq04.shtml) SEATTLE POST

[thumb=A]amiriyahi.JPG[/thumb]
An Iraqi man holds a peace offering at the Al-Amiriya bomb shelter in Baghdad, where by Iraqi count 408 civilians died after a U.S. bomb and missile destroyed it in 1991. October 04, 2002

Wreaths, flags, prayers mark place where hundreds of civilians died

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Al-Amiriya is an example of the worst that can happen, despite smart people and smart bombs. In February 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, a U.S. bomb punched a hole through the roof of the Al-Amiriya bomb shelter; seconds later a missile plowed through the opening. By Iraqi count, the blasts killed 408 civilians, mostly women and children. Many were killed by the concussion, the rest by a fire so intense it left flash-burned outlines of women and infants on the walls that are still visible today.The United States has said it believed it was targeting a military command center.

Today, although much of the visible damage in Baghdad from the Gulf War has been repaired, the shelter remains largely as it was after the bombing. It is in a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood, although, with potholes and broken windows here and there, it is a neighborhood that is showing signs of wear. The shelter has become a pilgrimage site for political and religious delegations that come to Baghdad. The cool, gray and charcoal-colored corridors are lined with memorial wreaths and the flags of many nations, along with signed prayers from foreign leaders. There also are hundreds of photos and drawings of the women and children who died, along with favorite toys, books and other personal belongings left by survivors.

Fatima, a middle-aged woman who lost her husband and children in the bombing, greets all visitors at the entrance. The night of the attack, she had gone to a friend’s house. She said, “I should get back to the shelter.” But her friend said, “You go there every night, so, why don’t you just stay here tonight.” She did, and now she is alone.After the bodies were removed from the shelter, Fatima moved onto the grounds and has never left. She lives there, giving tours to anyone who comes along, and asks for donations to maintain the site as a shrine.

The deaths at the shelter were just part of the toll from the Gulf War. Estimates vary dramatically on both the number of non-combatants killed – anywhere from fewer than 1,000 to 25,000 – and soldiers killed – from a little more than 1,000 to tens of thousands. There were 214 U.S. and allied casualties during the war.

If the United States launches an attack, this time the death toll could be higher, from the immediate fighting and from the renewed destruction of the country’s infrastructure, according to U.N. officials and in the opinion of people on the streets. “We don’t like the war . . . it is horrible, but, believe me, everyone in Iraq will fight,” said Al’ Saeed, a technical engineer at an office on Karata Street, in a busy commercial district of the city. “We have lived from 1990 until now with the embargo, also another kind of war, a kind of fighting . . . with food and medicine. It is very bad.”

Many Iraqis who could afford to have left the country – at least 1 million of Iraq’s 23 million people in the past 12 years. They are the ones with the most education, the cream of the middle class. Those who remain could face a food crisis if war breaks out, some believe. Although the past two years have brought good rainfall, which means a good harvest this year of wheat and dates, many Iraqis would starve without the United Nations food program. The average Iraqi has about six weeks of food at home, and there is perhaps another six weeks in U.N. storehouses.

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Photographs and drawings of those who were killed, many of them women and children, line the walls of the Al-Amiriya bomb shelter. (October 04, 2002)

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DHP, when were you last there?

Also, about sanctions, Sanctions are good..very good, else the butcher would have built more palaces. Do you know how many were put up after the sanctions took into effect? If you don’t (which you most likely don’t), feel free to ask. I also imagine that you approved Saddam's invading Kuwait. Tell us why you approve that?

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NYA... Stop imagining its not good for your health :-P. This is not about the invasion of Kuwait, Sadam was guilty, but thats not the argument here. Its about the countless number of Iraqi civilians killed in the last war and continue to die as a result of the sanctions. Its about the Humanitarian disaster inflicted onto ordinary Iraqi civilians, something which seems to be beyond your capability to understand.

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Oh wao..are you saying that your approved the massacre of Kurds but you cant understand the sanctions? Totally amazing. He brought that upon himself and the Iraqi people, if you feel so strongly about that, why don’t you preach Arabs to get rid of him? Still you can understand where the money came from for building palaces (the ones built after the sanctions). Don't worry love, after the butcher is gone, Iraq will be rebuilt, then you can worry about Saudi Arabia and other backward countries who are in line to face the SANCTIONS.

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NYA, imagination seems to be one of your attributes..:-P , this TOPIC is about the Al-Amirya Shelter and the dangers that Iraqi civilians will face if there is another war... regards to the kurdish issue, I think most analysts have already established that the Bush administration KNEW about the atrocities commited in Northern Iraq, YET they totally ignored this issue.

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DHP, don’t you think that it’s ironic that he built Bomb shelters while invading neighboring countries? I think that’s pretty assuming…don’t you think? What did he think he was doing?

And why do you blame Americans for not doing anything while Kurds were being slaughtered? Do you blame the impotent Muslim nations too (but more importantly, do you blame Saddam (I guess you don’t) Or just the USA? You are slower than you appear to be.

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NYA.. as always, living in his own imaginitive world :-P. Regards to bomb shelters, whats wrong with having them, almost every country in the world has built them to protect their civilians in times of war. Tragically even these civilian shelters are considered legitimite targets by war planners which is exactly what happened at Al-Amirya. Btw, the blame for the Kurdish atrocities lies with all parties.

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DHP lets go back a little further than Gulf War..was Iraq a bed of roses?No it wasnt......all the sanctions did was tighten the already dirt poor and opressed people. Instead of choosing to have tunnel vision....you should go see what an average iraqi thinks about the barbarian saddam, since you obviously are not very cognitive about such issues. The fact is that they all know he is a delusional psycho who would trade his own mother just to keep things in control. They are all welcoming his departure with open arms.

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I remember the CNN reporter at the time (Peter Arnett I think) clearly saying when he visited the site, that it was nothing but a bomb shelter. So the 408 civilians that were killed at Al Amirya were no doubt killed deliberately?

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Malik73: *
I remember the CNN reporter at the time (Peter Arnett I think) clearly saying when he visited the site, that it was nothing but a bomb shelter. So the 408 civilians that were killed at Al Amirya were no doubt killed deliberately?
[/QUOTE]

Peter Arnett reported about this "collateral damage" on CNN and the world saw as the badly burned bodies of women and childres were brought out. He came under criticism at that time from government and military circles for his objective reportage of civilian casualties resulting from the US bombing of Baghdad.

He was ultimately fired by CNN under heavy pressure from Prntagon for his documentary "Valley of Death" which depicted presented compelling evidence that US commandos had used deadly sarin gas in an operation to kill American soldiers who had defected into Laos from Vietnam.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by 5Abi: *

Peter Arnett reported about this "collateral damage" on CNN and the world saw as the badly burned bodies of women and childres were brought out. He came under criticism at that time from government and military circles for his objective reportage of civilian casualties resulting from the US bombing of Baghdad.

He was ultimately fired by CNN under heavy pressure from Prntagon for his documentary "Valley of Death" which depicted presented compelling evidence that US commandos had used deadly sarin gas in an operation to kill American soldiers who had defected into Laos from Vietnam.
[/QUOTE]

Peter Arnett, a great reporter who exposed the truth about how the US military quite knowingly killed hundreds of innocent Iraqi civilians. It would be interesting to know more about US troops using the deadly Sarin gas in Indo-China. Was that not the same gas that that Japanese cult terrorist group used on the Tokyo underground a few years ago?

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The Victims of Amiriya Shelter](nonviolence.org) Voices in the Wilderness

Foreword: by Chuck Quilty

Amiriya Shelter is located in the western section of Baghdad. The shelter was built in 1984, during the Iraq-Iran War (1980-88), by a consortium of Finnish companies. The ceiling was made of steel-rod reinforced concrete about 1.6 yards thick. Heavy steel doors weighing tons were at the entrances. The shelter was built to with-stand nuclear or chemical attack by the latest international standards.

In the early hours of Valentine’s Day, 1991, a “smart bomb” penetrated a ventilation shaft in the roof of Amiriya Shelter opening a hole in the roof and blasting all the doors shut. A second bomb followed and created a human inferno. Temperatures rose to over 2000 degrees Centigrade literally incinerating the occupants.

I have visited Amiriya Shelter several times. Today it is a monument to those who died there. One can walk through and see the opening where the bombs came through the ceiling, pictures from news accounts of the
tragedy, shrines to family members who died there, and the grisly signs of the horror which occurred there.

The walls are blackened by the heat which engulfed the occupants accept where “nuclear shadow”-like images of mothers and children who perished appear on the walls. Remnants of charred human flesh, the hand prints of children from the top deck of bunk beds, are visable on the ceiling. In the basement, which contained rest-rooms and kitchen facilities, water pipes broke from the explosion and water flowed up to over five feet in heigth and boiled from the incredible heat. People were literally “cooked” alive. Human flesh hangs on the walls and eyeballs are imbedded there also.

According to neighborhood residents, 1186 people occupied the shelter that night. Only 14 survived. In the aftermath of the attack, 481 bodies were found. On my first visit to Amiriya, I was shown through the shelter by a woman dressed in black. She explained everything in detail to us - the gaping hole in the ceiling, how the heavy steel doors were blown shut, etc. Then she stopped in front of one of the memorials to victims who had died and announced that I was looking at the pictures of nine family members she had lost in the tragedy, including her daughter, Reyda.

I felt like I had just been hit over the head with a sledge hammer and was in that place between consciousness and unconsciousness. I wanted to be “beamed up,” to be anywhere but there. I was paralyzed by guilt and the immensity of this woman’s loss. I was speechless! In that eternity of three or four minutes of silence, I had to fight to find the simple words “I’m terribly sorry.”

Umm Reyda (the mother of Reyda) lives now at Amiriya and dedicates her life to telling people about the crime that happened there. She is quick to point out that the crime continues daily because of the sanctions against Iraq.

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*According to neighborhood residents, 1186 people occupied the shelter that night. Only 14 survived. In the aftermath of the attack, 481 bodies were found. *

481 Iraqi civilians were slaughetered in one deadly attack... is that what the US calls "collateral damage"?

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[thumb=B]sheltb.JPG[/thumb]
Hands traces of Al Amiriya refugee victims
branded in the walls. In this cruel attack,
more than 403 Iraqi civilians were killed,
142 of whom were children under ten years old
source](Al-Amiriya Centre for Documentation and International Initiatives, Madrid)

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I wonder how many more Al Amirya style atrocities by the American’s in the illegal war to be declared on Iraq?

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Not surprisingly, not many residents will be taking refuge this time around in any of the bomb shelters.

Baghdad shelters that are a shrine to the dead - not a place of safety
Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, 20 March 2003

Beneath the yellow sky of a gathering dust storm, Iraqis hunkered down for a long and unpredictable siege yesterday, gripped by only one certainty: come what may they will not set foot in the city’s bomb shelters.

Amid an atmosphere of apprehension, Baghdad’s 34 bomb shelters were oases of calm, with piles of rubbish and debris accumulating at their gates. A few had caretakers in residence, but there was no sign of Iraqis seeking shelter, or panic. The structures are impressive, two-metre thick walls of concrete and steel rising out of the ground, equipped with ventilation and air conditioning systems, three-tier bunk beds, generators, showers and food for 1,200.

They were ordered from Finland during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, with thick steel doors built to withstand conventional bombs, chemical warfare and radiation fallout from a nuclear attack.

Iraqis see them as death traps. “Why would we ever go there?” asked Lena, who lives about 300 metres away from a shelter. “Do you want us to suffocate and burn?”

Faith in the city’s civil defences vanished in a single night during the 1991 Gulf war when a laser-guided bomb drilled through the thick concrete roof of the Amariya shelter in western Baghdad, incinerating more than 400 Iraqis sheltering there. Only 14 survived.

The shelter has been turned into a shrine to the dead - refurbished during the past few weeks as Iraq stood on the brink of another US bombardment - with a guide drawing attention to the dark blotches on the concrete floor marking the spot where people were killed.

“These are from 12 years ago, but the blood has stayed fresh until now because they are martyrs,” said Intesar al-Samarie.

So have the memories. While the wealthy are splashing out on portable sealed chambers - as advertised relentlessly on Iraqi state television - the poor are unlikely to overcome their dread of shelters, despite the offer of food, electricity and water. “Nobody is going to go to the shelters,” Ms Samarie said. “There is just no way. Many people believe that Bush will do it again.”