Video Suggests U.S. Forces Attacked Iraq Wedding

Monday, May 24, 2004

(1:49 PM ET)

By Tom Perry

Reuters Writer

"She lost her mother and father. Another family of eight lost six members. Another family lost four. It was just a wedding."

BAGHDAD -- Reuters
New video footage showing Iraqis celebrating a desert wedding raised more questions Monday about a U.S. air strike last week that killed about 40 people.

The U.S. military insisted most of the dead were foreign guerrilla fighters who had slipped over the nearby Syrian border. Local people say the Americans massacred wedding guests.

Associated Press Television News said it had obtained the footage from a survivor of the strike early on May 19.

A Baghdad musician, a drummer who said he was the only survivor of the 10-man band which played at the party, told Reuters the film was shot Monday, May 17 -- the second of three days of wedding celebrations that ended with the attack.

The film shows pickup trucks racing across the desert -- some of the dead came from the regional capital Ramadi -- men dancing in a tent, children running around and a musician playing an electric organ. The same man later appeared dead in a shroud.

Basem Ishab Mohamed, the drummer, identified the organist as Mohaned, brother of a noted Baghdad wedding singer Hussein al-Ali, who also performed at the wedding. Both were killed when U.S. aircraft struck in the early hours of Wednesday, he said.

Mohamed was speaking at the singer's family home, where relatives including Hussein's daughter were poring over photos of the brothers. They were buried in Baghdad Thursday.

Mohamed and other witnesses said festivities ended on Tuesday at about 10:30 p.m. when they said U.S. military aircraft began circling overhead. They surveyed the area for four hours before the deadly strike at about 3 a.m.

"I was terrified. It was like a nightmare," he said. He escaped from a tent where he and the other male wedding guests had been asleep and crawled hundreds of yards on his stomach until he reached a nearby house.

He returned in the morning to find more than 40 dead, including women, children and his fellow musicians.

* "IT WAS JUST A WEDDING"

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2004 © Reuters, Ltd.

Dan