AMIRIYA SHELTER, USA’s MOST SAVAGE CRIME IN THE 20th CENTURY

 

It started on the night of January 17th, 1991, when US hostile bombardment began. Fear of intense bombings for up to one month and a half after that, constantly haunted millions of Iraqis.

Thousands of cruise missiles and guided bombs dropped from allied warplanes caused immense loss of civilian lives and great damage to civilian property. The number of Iraqi civilians killed during the war is estimated at 8000.

However, the most horrifying US crime ever committed against the people of Iraq was the attack on the air raid shelter, Amiriya. The US action took place on the night of February 13, 1991. 407 civilians including 52 children and 262 women were killed.

Two US missiles specially developed for such fortified constructions hit the shelter, built against air raids and other hazards of war.

According to an eyewitness from Amiriya, US planes were seen flying, sometimes at very low levels, over the area on three consecutive days. The ostensible purpose of the flights was to take photographs of the shelter and to collect sufficient information about its technical specifications.

This explained the elaborate plan by which the operation was carried out as regards the accurate and precise bombing of the target. The first missile was so designed as to force an entry into the building through the ventilation hole thereby causing an explosion strong enough to close all the doors of the shelter.

The second missile was supposed to pass through the opening made by the first missile for the fulfillment of the task.

Everything went according to plan. Temperature rose to a thousand degrees centigrade.

Bodies of the people who were trapped inside the blazing building melted away and some were mixed with the melted cement and iron. The whole place had been turned into a mass crematorium.

Very few people, by the grace of god, survived the attack, while hundreds others soon burnt away as they were caught by excessive heat and smoke.

The search among the debris for the corpses was a distressing scene. They were all either deformed, burnt or torn into pieces. Their identification was absolutely impossible.

The vicious attack on Amiriya was a blatant breach of human norms and traditions. US war planners sought to minimize civilian deaths. They justified their outrageous conduct on the assumption that the shelter was a military headquarters, whereas, as the truth later came out, it appeared to be a civilian installation and therefore should not have been the object of attack or reprisal. The evidence of this was detected by foreign correspondents that visited the place soon after the attack.

The news of the bombing of Amiriya shelter aroused profound alarm.

On its part, US Pentagon finally admitted the crime. But it tried to lessen its impact saying it was a mere mistake and not a deliberate bombing. A senior Pentagon official was quoted by the Sunday Times of February 17 saying that the bombing of a civilian shelter in Baghdad had been a mistake.

The information on the strength of which the shelter had been identified as a military bunker, was seemingly outdated, the official explained. Officials of US and allied thus justified the sordid motives of their governments as being a mistake after they had failed to convince international public opinion that the shelter was a military one. The whole world knows, however, that professional killers are always killers no matter when and where, and that US excuses are merely desperate attempts to cover up the violent crime.

Background Information

Amiriya shelter is situated in the West of Baghdad. It is one of many air raids shelters built during the Iraq-Iran war in different parts of the country.

They were constructed to the latest international standards by a consortium of Finnish Companies widely known for building such kind of structures that resist nuclear and chemical attacks. The whole project was under the supervision of Al-Idrisi Laboratory, a division of the Ministry of Housing and Construction which made some alterations to the original plan to suit the particular weather conditions of Iraq.

A typical shelter is composed of an upper floor, ground floor and underground floor. Each floor has an area of 500 square meters.

The average thickness of the cement ceiling is one and a half meters. Steel bars are embedded in the ceiling. Each bar is three to four centimeters thick. The shelter can accommodate about 1000 persons. It has full service facilities.

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