Death Toll - 07/21 - 07/22/03

[DoYouEverWonder]

Carnage as Liberia capital shelled


Monday, 21 July, 2003

At least 90 people have been killed in a day of fierce fighting in the besieged Liberian capital, fuelling anger towards the US for failing to send peacekeepers to stop the civil war.

Mortars fell on the diplomatic quarter of Monrovia - killing 60 people alone - as rebels opposed to President Charles Taylor fought for a third day for control of the city.

Bodies of the dead were piled up outside the American Embassy in protest at the delay in bringing in US peacekeepers.

<snip>

They were angry, he says, that America had not led a peacekeeping force to Liberia while there was still a ceasefire to keep.



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Baghdad attack kills US soldier


Monday, 21 July, 2003

One US soldier and an Iraqi translator have been killed in an attack in northern Baghdad.

They died when their vehicle was hit by an improvised roadside bomb and small arms fire in the al-Sulaykh area, a US military spokesman said.

The incident comes a day after two US soldiers were killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in the Kurdish-controlled area of northern Iraq, where strikes against American forces have been rare.

<snip>

In a separate incident on Sunday, an Iraqi driver was killed and three other people were injured when a two-car UN convoy was fired on near the southern city of Hilla.


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Kashmir attack on Hindu pilgrims

Monday, 21 July, 2003

At least seven people have been killed and more than 20 people injured in two explosions in Indian-administered Kashmir, police said.

The blasts occurred in a kitchen which provides pilgrims free food near the town of Katra - the base for Hindu pilgrims climbing up to the Vaishno Devi shrine as part of an annual pilgrimage.

Most of the victims were said to be pilgrims.


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U.S. troops chase, kill attackers in Afghanistan


Monday, July 21, 2003 Posted: 5:13 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Special Forces attacked and killed about 22 suspected Taliban forces in eastern Afghanistan after the convoy they were in was ambushed while on patrol, Pentagon officials said Monday.

The attack on the convoy occurred Saturday near the southeastern town of Spin Boldak, a hotbed of Taliban holdouts leftover after the U.S.-led war to remove the ruling Taliban regime.

U.S. forces pursued their attackers and killed approximately five Taliban soldiers, according to a U.S. Central Command statement. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Special Forces attacked and killed about 22 suspected Taliban forces in eastern Afghanistan after the convoy they were in was ambushed while on patrol, Pentagon officials said Monday.

<snip>

The helicopters continued the chase killing 17 to 19 more Taliban while making several passes over a hillside, the statement said.

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Police Encircle Rio Shantytowns as Gang Warfare Leaves 9 Dead


Scores of police officers from across Rio de Janeiro were surrounding shantytowns on the city's northern outskirts last night in an effort to contain brutal gang warfare that has left at least nine dead in two days of battles involving the police and rival drug gangs.

Maj. Roberto Edelman, of the 16th Battalion of the city police, said in a telephone interview, that the conflict started on Tuesday night, when members of the Third Command gang, which controls the shantytown known as Parada de Lucas invaded a neighboring slum, Vigário Geral, run by the notoriously ruthless Red Command, which controls much of the city's drug trade.

Residents said nine people were kidnapped in the raid by gang members disguised in police uniforms. Six bodies were found in a nearby river early yesterday, Major Edelman said. As yet, the bodies had not been identified, he said.

Gang members from Vigário Geral, backed by at least 50 allies from other shantytowns, launched a counter-attack on Parada de Lucas early yesterday and the police intervened, killing three gang members, taking six prisoners and seizing several automatic weapons, pistols and a cache of ammunition.

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ICRC staffer shot dead, another wounded in Iraq

GENEVA, July 22 — The International Committee of the Red Cross said a staff member was killed and one of its drivers wounded in a shooting south of Baghdad on Tuesday.

It said Sri Lankan technician Nadisha Yasassri Ranmuthu had died on the spot after the vehicle in which he was travelling with driver Hamed Rashid came under fire near the town of Hilla.

The Swiss-based humanitarian agency said that the vehicle was clearly marked with the ICRC's red emblems. It was not known who was responsible for the shooting.

<snip>

On Sunday, a foreign employee of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) was slightly injured and the driver killed when their vehicle veered into a bus after being raked by gunfire from a passing car, also south of the capital.


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Dead: the sons of Saddam

Uday and Qusay, Saddam Hussein's sons and his most feared lieutenants, were killed yesterday in a gun battle at their hideout in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul.

<snip>

At a late-night press conference in Baghdad, General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of ground forces in Iraq, said: "We are certain that Uday and Qusay were killed today. We have used multiple sources to identify the individuals."

<snip>

Saddam's sons, together with another man and a young boy, had barricaded themselves inside the home of a Mosul businessman, thought to be a distant relative, and put up fierce resistance. Gen Sanchez said the entire operation took six hours.


Also among the dead from yesterday's gunfight was a teenage boy. Pentagon officials suggested he could be Qusay's 14-year-old son, who is known to travel with him. The fourth body was thought to be a bodyguard or aide. The remains were flown out of Mosul for DNA tests, but Gen Sanchez said he was confident the bodies were sufficiently recognisable to be positively identified.


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Death toll in Liberian capital rises to 600


The civilian death toll in Liberia's civil war soared to more than 600 yesterday, according to government officials, as fighting raged for a fifth day between rebels and government forces for control of the capital, Monrovia.

As mortars and machinegun-fire ripped through residential districts, panicked residents and aid workers appealed for foreign troops to intervene and re-establish peace. The United Nations refugee agency described the situation in the capital as "horrific".

<snip>

The EU's aid coordinator, David Parker, said at least 200,000 displaced people were sheltering in Monrovia's football stadiums and ruined Masonic lodge. All lacked adequate food or clean water.

<snip>

US diplomats in Monrovia yesterday removed 26 corpses from the embassy gates, where frantic civilians imploring America to intervene deposited them in protest on Monday

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'Saddam message' heralds fresh attacks on US troops


23 July 2003

<snip>

The broadcast came with news that two US soldiers were killed today in separate attacks on military convoys, including one near Mosul. Eight more were wounded.

The attacks depressed hopes that the sons' deaths would reduce attacks on US forces - with the total of American soldiers killed since the beginning of the war now at 155.

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Brigadier killed, two generals hurt in Valley[br />
23 July 2003

NEW DELHI, July 22: India's army commander for Jammu and Kashmir and another general were injured on Tuesday, and a brigadier killed, in an attack by suspected militants in an attack on a military garrison, a defence ministry spokesman said.

Lieutenant General Hari Prasad and another general received minor injuries in the attack and Brigadier V K Govil of the 16th Corps has died, spokesman P K Bandhopadhya was quoted by news reports as saying.

<snip>

According to some reports from Jammu, the three top-ranking officers were present in the garrison where at least two armed Kashmiri rebels earlier staged the attack that left dead at least seven army personnel and the two raiders


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Civilians killed in attacks Monday July 21, 2003, are laid outside the U.S. embassy in the Liberian capital Monrovia. The bodies were placed here in protest at the lack of U.S. intervention in the war-torn West-African nation. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)




Nine-year-old Iraqi Shaymah Shakr is carried by her mother after she was hurt in what the family described as an overnight raid by U.S. forces searching for weapons in the family home in Ramadi, about 90 km west of the capital Baghdad July 21, 2003. The family said that two girls injured by flying glass were taken to an unknown location for medical treatment by the troops. The U.S. military in command of the area could not confirm the raid. REUTERS/Akram Saleh





An Iraqi policeman examines the body of a man killed July 23, 2003 by celebratory gunfire which erupted across Baghdad on news that Saddam Hussein's sons had been killed during a house raid by U.S. troops in Mosul. The search for Saddam Hussein drew fresh impetus on Wednesday after U.S. soldiers killed his two sons Uday and Qusay in a fierce six-hour gunbattle in northern Iraq. REUTERS/Faleh Kheiber




People and relatives pray near the coffins, draped with the Colombian flag, of six police officers during a funeral service in Manizalez, 105 miles northwest of Bogota, Colombia, Tuesday, July 22, 2003. Six police officers and one soldier were killed by rebels during a rescue operation of 22 people kidnapped on a highway in western Colombia by rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, on Monday, police said.(AP Photo)

[newyawker99]

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