<< The guerrillas blew up a mosque and posted notices saying that Shias should leave town or die. The Shia political parties started a press campaign - but it was dismissed by the Interior Ministry, whose officials said that the whole affair was a tribal feud. >>
London Times April 22, 2005 Saddam's men strike back in purge that left river of blood >From James Hider in Baghdad ABU QADDUM lays out the pictures of mutilated bodies dredged from the Tigris River like a player dealing cards. Some had their hands cut off, others are headless or burnt. Another was strangled, with his tongue lolling out. He thinks one bloated, slime-covered corpse might be his younger brother. The shocking images come from Iraq's new killing fields - the small town of Madain just 20 miles from Baghdad. In other times the massacre might have prompted calls for international intervention. But there are already 150,000 US and British troops in Iraq and this was done under their noses. Abu Qaddum's pictures are a terrifying testament to the chaos of Iraq. Madain has had no police force since a mob of criminals and insurgents burnt down the police station last year. The police fled. Sunni guerrillas quickly took over, running the town as their own criminal fiefdom and randomly killing Shia residents, whom they considered infidels and US sympathisers. Then they launched an all-out attempt to purge the town of its Shias. News of this "ethnic cleansing" leaked out in confusing rumours. Shia officials spoke last weekend of a massive hostage-taking. But when Iraqi Interior Ministry commandos stormed the town they found car bombs, weapons and a training camp - but no kidnappers and no hostages. The whole story was dismissed as scaremongering. Then the photographs of the bodies emerged and with them the tale of Abu Qaddum - a resident who survived the massacre and this week alerted President Talabani. "I think there may be 300 bodies in the Tigris," he told The Times yesterday. He recounted how, for the past year, Sunni insurgents have built bases in abandoned farmhouses in the lush river plains south of Baghdad. First the gangs attacked Madain's police station. An armed mob set fire to the building and the police cars. Emboldened by the lack of a response from the US-led occupation, the guerrillas then started using a former Republican Guard base as a training camp. More guerrillas dribbled in, many affiliated to the extremist group Ansa al-Sunna and led by a Syrian called Annas Abu Ayman. They installed a reign of terror, kidnapping government employees and members of Shia political parties. Sometimes the bodies surfaced in the palm groves, more often people just vanished. When US forces stormed the guerrilla stronghold of Fallujah in November, more fighters arrived in Madain, on the eastern fringes of a lawless area known as the Triangle of Death. During Ramadan last autumn, throngs of Sunni guerrillas mustered around a mosque, denouncing Shias as traitors and spies, lambasting them for not joining the resistance. Abu Qaddum said that the Shias did not respond until the guerrillas assassinated their leader, Sheikh Mahmoud al-Madaini, as he headed to prayers. His car was intercepted by a convoy of 15 vehicles packed with gunmen, who riddled it with bullets. The sheikh, his son and three others were killed. The Shias went to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, their spiritual leader in the holy city of Najaf. Abu Qaddum said that the septuagenarian cleric, who is an avowed moderate, told them that their relatives were martyrs but that they should stay their hand: the terrorists wanted the Shias to attack to spark a civil war - which would be worse. On February 10 a convoy of police finally arrived in Madain. At first the officers found the place calm. But news of their arrival had been leaked - even Abu Qaddum knew that they were coming - and the guerrillas sprang a well-planned ambush. Many officers died and the wounded who were captured were doused in petrol and burnt to death. After that, the kidnapping and killing accelerated. "They were taking two or three people a day, killing people in the street, going into people's houses to drag them out," Abu Qaddum said. The guerillas also set up checkpoints on the road to Baghdad, executing government officials when they could find them, and looting and burning lorries. People were too scared to go to market for fear of being seized. At night families stood guard in two-hour shifts. Six weeks ago Abu Qaddum's brother went to find a doctor for his sick wife and was never seen again. The guerrillas blew up a mosque and posted notices saying that Shias should leave town or die. The Shia political parties started a press campaign - but it was dismissed by the Interior Ministry, whose officials said that the whole affair was a tribal feud. When Iraqi troops finally moved in they found no sign of the horror. They asked through loudspeakers for witnesses to show them where the terrorists and their hostages were. The Shias were too terrified to come forward, knowing that the troops could be gone in a week. The story was dismissed as exaggeration. Then the first bodies were found. Some had broken free of concrete slabs to which they had been tied before they were thrown in the river. A distraught father looking for his son heard about this and hired a Baghdad diver to investigate. The diver emerged, filled with horror, saying that the riverbed was thick with bodies. So far 57 have been found but Abu Qaddum - now a refugee living in another city under an assumed name - says that local police are too afraid to retrieve any more. Locals want American troops to secure the area and send divers down for the rest. US embassy and Iraqi government spokesmen told The Times that they were investigating the affair.
