DARK SIDE OF OCCUPATION OF IRAQ
"While U.S. authorities keep up-top-date track of the mounting American casualties in Iraq, the administration is intentionally not keeping track of the Iraqi civilians accidentally shot or maimed by stressed-out GI's who don't speak Arabic. At least it is not doing so publicly.

Peter Beaumont reports in the London Observer on the death of one Iraqi school girl:

"Farah Fadhil was only 18 when she was killed. An American soldier threw a grenade through the window of her apartment. Her death, early last Monday, was slow and agonizing. Her legs had been shredded, her hands burnt and punctured by splinters of metal, suggesting that the bright high-school student had covered her face to shield it from the explosion. She had been walking to the window to try to calm an escalating situation; to use her smattering of English to plead with the soldiers who were spraying her apartment building with bullets...But then a grenade was thrown and Farah died. So did Marwan Hassan who, according to neighbors, was caught in the crossfire as he went looking for his brother when the shooting began.

What is perhaps most shocking about their deaths is that the coalition troops who killed them did not even bother to record details of the raid with the coalition military press office. The killings were that unremarkable. What happened in Mahmudiya last week should not be forgotten, for the story of this raid is also the story of the dark side of the US-led occupation of Iraq, of the violent and sometimes lethal raids carried out apparently beyond any accountability. For while the media are encouraged to count each US death, the Iraqi civilians who have died at American hands since the fall of Saddam's regime have been as uncounted as their names have been unacknowledged."
The Observer, Sunday, September 7, 2003
Global Beat