Human Rights Watch: One thousand Iraqis are the victims of American neglect

A report published by the human rights monitoring group, Human Rights Watch, in Washington stressed that more than 1000 Iraqi civilians were killed or injured during the American- British invasion of Iraq, because of the neglect of the invading forces, and its use of cluster bombs indiscriminately in the populated areas.

The report said that the British forces did not succeed in performing the mission assigned to it to guard stores of abandoned weapons. The report reads that the coalition forces, generally speaking, tried to avoid killing Iraqis non- participants in the fighting, and despite of that, it was possible to prevent the killing of hundreds of civilians, according to the executive director of the Organization Kenneth Ruth.

A spokesman for the pentagon responded to the report by saying that the American forces "practiced a large amount of self- control, and showed great caution towards the used ammunition." But the report said that the invading forces used some 13, 000 shells loaded with more that two million cluster bombs, and this resulted in killing more than one thousand Iraqis in several areas such as al-Hella city where the American bombardment on march 31st resulted in killing 33 persons and wounding other 109. Cluster bombs are often fired by a missile which blows up to disseminate several bombs in an area of several kilometers.

The organization based its report, on a visit to 10 Iraqi cities and 200 interviews with Iraqi doctors and American doctors and officials. The report said that the Iraqi army used civilians as human shields, and misused humanitarian organizations headquarters like the Red Cross and Red Crescent premises.