Recent Iraqi shootings highlight civilian deaths

updated 7:53 p.m. ET May 31, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The shooting death of a pregnant Iraqi, apparently by U.S. troops, as she was rushing to a hospital threw an intense spotlight Wednesday on the troubling issue of Iraqi civilian deaths.

Iraqi police and witnesses said the troops gunned down the woman and her cousin in their car. The U.S. military said the car entered a clearly marked prohibited area but failed to stop despite repeated signals; shots were fired to disable the vehicle, it said.

More than 4,000 Iraqis — many of them civilians — have been killed in war-related violence this year, including at least 936 in May alone, according to an Associated Press count. That makes May the second-deadliest month for Iraqis over the past year. Only March recorded more fatalities.

The figures show that civilians, not Iraqi security forces, are increasingly the casualties of violence. Eighty-two percent of the war-related Iraqi deaths recorded in May were civilians, compared with 61 percent in May 2005, when 746 Iraqis were killed.

Military and civilian deaths The following are the latest figures as of May 31 for military deaths in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, in line with the most recent information from the U.S. military: U.S.-led coalition forces: United States, 2,468 Britain, 113 Other nations, 111 Iraqis: Military, between 4,895 and 6,370 Civilians, between 38,059 and 42,434 Source: Reuters

But the most striking change would seem to be that the insurgents are not nearly so willing to sacrifice themselves as they were a year ago. During May 2005, about 36 suicide bombings killed at least 331 Iraqis and wounded 962.

This May, by contrast, 11 suicide attacks killed at least 98 Iraqis and wounded 283 — about one-third of the casualties of 12 months earlier.

Much of the violence is the result of Iraqi attacks.

‘May God take revenge on the Americans’
But on Tuesday, Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, a 35-year-old pregnant woman, and her cousin Saliha Mohammed Hassan, 57, became the latest victims of what many Iraqis think is the American troops’ disregard for life.

Jassim’s brother, Khalid Nisaif Jassim, said he was speeding to get to a maternity hospital in Samarra when shots were fired at his car. He said the shooting happened on a side road that the U.S. military closed two weeks ago. News of the closure, he said, was slow to reach the rural area just outside Samarra where his family lives.

The cousins’ bodies were taken to Samarra General Hospital, where relatives said doctors struggled to save Jassim’s baby but failed.

The U.S. military said its forces “later received reports from Iraqi police that two women had died from gunshot wounds at the Samarra Hospital and one of the females may have been pregnant. The incident is under investigation.”

Nabiha Nisaif Jassim is survived by a husband, 36-year-old Hussein Tawfeeq, and two children, Hashimayah, 2, and Ali, 1. Tawfeeq was waiting at the hospital for his wife when she was shot.

“May God take revenge on the Americans and those who brought them here,” Jassim’s brother told the AP. “People are shocked and fed up with the Americans. People in Samarra are very angry with the Americans not only because of Haditha case but because the Americans kill people randomly, especially recently.”

At a time when U.S. Marines are investigating an alleged massacre of Iraqi men, women and children in the town of Haditha last fall, the military says it constantly strives to avoid civilian casualties.

“The loss of life is regrettable, and coalition forces go to great lengths to prevent them,” the military said of the Samarra shooting.

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