AMMAN, Jordan - The apparent bombing of a civilian shopping area in Baghdad on Wednesday marks the first major public relations disaster for a U.S. military effort that has made avoiding civilian casualties one of its highest priorities.
Reports from Baghdad say 14 civilians died when two cruise missiles slammed into a residential area early Wednesday.
Pentagon officials have not confirmed that their missiles struck the Al-Shaab neighborhood of Baghdad, but they did say that they targeted nine Iraqi missile launchers that had been placed within civilian areas, many of them less than 300 feet from residential areas.
The incident nonetheless underscored the dangers that a protracted campaign will bring for military planners counting on the eventual support of Iraqi citizens for America's effort not only to depose Saddam Hussein but also to install a stable democratic government that will enjoy the support of all Iraqis.
The widely watched Arabic Al Jazeera television channel broadcast gruesome footage of charred bodies and bloodied debris accompanied by images of angry Iraqis chanting their rage with America. Reflecting the hardening attitudes of an Arab world already bitterly opposed to the war, the Lebanese TV network Al Manar headlined its nightly news by announcing that "a hideous massacre in Baghdad marks the seventh day of aggression and raids in the Iraqi capital."
The broadcast added: "The real face of the aggressor has been exposed."
The toll in this suspected accidental bombing pales in comparison with other infamous U.S. mistargetings, including the accidental bombing of an air raid shelter in the first Gulf War that killed 435 people, according to Iraqi officials; the mistaken attack on a refugee convoy in the Kosovo war, in which at least 64 refugees were killed, and most recently the bombing of a wedding party in Afghanistan last year in which 41 people died.
Human-rights groups say they have been impressed by the apparent efforts so far to minimize the suffering of civilians in Iraq. "It's clear that they have been taking their promise to avoid civilian casualties seriously," said Reuben Brigerty, who is monitoring the conduct of the war on behalf of the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
But in these crucial early stages of the war, in which the United States is fighting also to convince Iraqis as well as many in the outside world that its intentions toward Iraq are honorable, images such as these could prove vital to the success or failure of the campaign.
So far, most reports suggest civilian casualties have been light, given the intensity of the bombing. Iraqi officials reported four civilian deaths Friday after the beginning of the promised "shock and awe" bombing campaign against Baghdad that set the heart of the city ablaze. The Iraqi authorities claim at least 70 deaths in Basra, but with the southern city still besieged by British forces, the figure cannot be confirmed.
U.N. officials and aid agencies say they have been unable to gather any independent information on civilian casualties anywhere in Iraq.
Most other evidence of civilian deaths has been anecdotal but it does suggest civilians are dying in parts of the country where reporters, aid groups and perhaps even the central Iraqi authorities are unable to gather information. Syrian news media reported five Syrians were killed Sunday when a missile struck their bus near the Syrian border in northwestern Iraq. A Jordanian taxi driver was killed on the first day of the war as he stopped to make a phone call on the main Baghdad-Amman highway. Four Jordanian students died during the weekend as they tried to travel home from their university.
Those incidents came to light because foreigners were involved. Although hundreds of journalists are embedded with military units fighting their way toward Baghdad, journalists do not have access to huge swaths of the country where allied ground forces are not present, but where bombing is apparently taking place.
A British Web site dedicated to monitoring civilian casualties, IraqBodyCount.net, counts a minimum of 212 deaths and a maximum of 292 since hostilities broke out. The figures are based on reports in international media, many of them quoting Iraqi government figures. They include an unconfirmed report that between 57 and 100 people died in a missile attack on the base of an extremist Islamist group, Al Ansar, in northern Iraq.
Similar methodology applied to the war in Afghanistan produced an overall civilian casualty toll of 2,000, a figure that independent analyses suggest is an overestimate. Marla Ruzicka, who traveled around Afghanistan gathering details of civilian casualties on behalf of Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based advocacy group for victims of U.S. bombing missions, counted 824 civilian deaths between the Oct. 6, 2001, start of the bombing campaign and the end of January 2002. She believes a maximum of between 1,200 and 1,500 people died in the 117-day period.
Those figures point to the increased accuracy of American bombing over the past decade. In the first gulf war an estimated 5,000 civilians died in 42 days of aerial bombardment and 100 hours of ground fighting, according to Human Rights Watch. In the 72-day bombing campaign to dislodge the Serbian army from Kosovo, Yugoslavia, in 1999, an estimated 500 civilians died.
However, the overall numbers will be less important than the perceptions of the war. And Arabs watching the nightly displays of firepower over Baghdad and the daily images of children in hospital wards are convinced that Iraqis are suffering terribly, according to Abdul Latif Arabiyat, a former speaker of the Jordanian parliament.
"The Americans are destroying everything in Iraq, and everyone is watching it on satellite TV," he said. "And after they've destroyed Iraq, how do they expect Iraqis to deal with them?"
© 2003, Chicago Tribune.
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