(extracts from a much longer article. Full version available on request)
TOQ AL-GHAZALAT, Iraq - Suddenly out of a clear blue sky, the forgotten war being waged by the United States and Britain over Iraq visited its lethal routine on the shepherds and farmers of Toq al-Ghazalat about 10:30 a.m. on May 17.
Omran Harbi Jawair, 13, was squatting on his haunches at the time, watching the family sheep as they nosed the hard, flat ground in search of grass. … Omran, who liked to kick a soccer ball around this dusty village, had just finished fifth grade at the little school a 15 minute walk from his mud-brick home.
That is when the missile landed.
Without warning, according to several youths standing nearby, the device came crashing down in an open field 200 yards from the dozen houses of Toq al-Ghazalat. A deafening explosion cracked across the silent land. Shrapnel flew in every direction. Four shepherds were wounded. And Omran, the others recalled, lay dead in the dirt, most of his head torn off, the white of his robe stained red.
What happened four weeks ago at Toq al-Ghazalat, 35 miles southwest of Najaf in southern Iraq, has become a recurring event in the Iraqi countryside. A week of conversations with wounded Iraqis and the families of those killed, around Najaf and in northern Iraq around Mosul, showed that civilian deaths and injuries are a regular part of the little discussed U.S. and British air operation over Iraq.
Lt. Gen. Yassin Jassem, spokesman for Iraq's air defense command, said about 300 Iraqis have been killed and more than 800 wounded by U.S. and British retaliatory attacks in the 18 months since President Saddam Hussein ordered his anti-aircraft batteries to fire on allied warplanes enforcing "no-fly" zones in northern and southern Iraq.
The Iraqi death toll has been substantiated in part by a U.N. survey that examined some incidents independently and accepted Iraqi reports on others.
U.S. and British warplanes enforcing the zones were heard almost daily crisscrossing the skies, although they were invisible flying at more than 20,000 feet. The Iraqi air defense command says it has detected penetrations into Iraqi airspace by more than 21,600 U.S. and British warplanes since December 1998, when Iraqis started opposing the patrols with antiaircraft fire. [There are] bomb or missile attacks on an average of once every three days. The Pentagon says more than 280,000 sorties have been flown in the near decade since the no-fly zones were imposed, without a single loss of aircraft to hostile fire.
The mounting toll - averaging one civilian death every other day by Iraq's count - has prompted France to freeze participation in enforcing the no-fly zones. It has generated growing protests from Russia and has left neighboring Saudi Arabia and Turkey increasingly uneasy about continuing to provide air bases for the U.S. and British enforcement aircraft.
Brian Whitaker - The Guardian, 16 June '00