http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050320/nysu016_3.htmlNEWSWEEK: Children From U.S. Checkpoint Shooting Now Living in Mosul; Twelve-Year-Old Believes His Parents are in Hospital Recovering
Sunday March 20, 10:47 am ET
- Soldiers Cleared of Wrongdoing
NEW YORK, March 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Five young children who lost their parents when the car they were riding in came under fire at a U.S. checkpoint in Iraq are now living in Mosul, sharing a three-room house with a married sister, her husband and at least three members of his family, Newsweek reports in the current issue. Army investigators in Iraq have cleared the U.S. soldiers, members of Apache Company, of any wrongdoing.
The Hassan family might have vanished into the war's statistics if Chris Hondros hadn't been at the scene that evening. The Getty Images photographer had spent the day on patrol with Apache Company. Readers have been asking Newsweek about the Hassan orphans ever since their picture appeared in the Jan. 31 issue. Special Correspondent Owen Matthews updates the situation of the children and reports what happened at the checkpoint and action of the U.S. military afterward.
"If it were up to me, I'd kill the Americans and drink their blood," says 14-year-old Jilan Hassan, who was in the car. Her 12-year-old brother, Rakan, was discharged from Mosul General Hospital this month. Doctors said his best hope of walking again is to seek treatment outside Iraq. He can move his legs. As far as he knows, his parents are in the hospital, recovering from the shooting, Matthews reports in the March 28 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 21).
Matthews reports that on the night of the shooting, Hussein Hassan, his wife Kamila, five of their children aged 2-14 and a 6-year-old cousin were speeding home to Tall Afar because curfew was 15 minutes away. Rakan was first to spot the soldiers in the deepening dusk. They were waving their arms and raising their assault rifles, yelling for the car to stop. The boy jumped up in the back seat. Before he could open his mouth to warn his father, a storm of gunfire struck the car, killing both parents and covering the children with their blood.
The soldiers offered water and pistachios to the kids. "We threw them in
faces," recalls Samar, one of the children. "We wouldn't talk to them." Medics dressed a bloody gash in Rakan's back. Bullet fragments had entered Rakan's abdomen just above the bladder and blasted out through his spine, damaging his three lowest vertebrae. One of the soldiers carried him in his arms as they rode to Tall Afar's General Hospital. The rest of the children were driven home by a relative, an ambulance driver. Baby brother Muhammad, not yet weaned, cried all night for his mother.
... you have to read the whole thing. SICK! War is HELL!
Photo gallery with audio from the photographer...
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6871483/site/newsweek/
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
