XIII. Unlawful Attacks on Government Security Forces

Perfidious Attacks

Perfidious attacks by insurgent groups on legitimate military targets (attacks in which a combatant pretends to be a civilian or other “protected person”) have directly caused hundreds of civilian casualties and have in general placed all civilians in Iraq at greater risk of harm. Suicide attacks in which the attacker conceals his or her identity as a combatant are war crimes for which those organizing such attacks can be prosecuted. Perfidious attacks increase the risk to all civilians at checkpoints and at other defended zones. Attackers who unlawfully feign civilian status to carry out attacks increase the likelihood that armed forces will use force against civilians who are perceived to be disguised combatants. Many of the shootings of civilians at U.S. and Iraqi checkpoints, however unlawful, occurred in part as a result of the fear the soldiers had of being attacked by insurgents pretending to be civilians (see Chapter XVI of this report, “Legal Standards and the Conflict in Iraq”).

Not all insurgent groups use suicide attacks. Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunna have claimed responsibility for most of the major suicide attacks, both on civilian targets and government armed forces, and in most of those attacks the attacker feigned civilian status.

On June 25 and 26, 2005, unknown insurgents in Mosul attacked Iraqi police and army personnel four times using perfidious methods, killing at least thirty-eight. The first attack came Saturday night, June 25, when a suicide car bomb exploded at a police checkpoint around 8:00 p.m., killing five officers and wounding two more. The next morning just after dawn, a man drove a red pick-up truck full of explosives into the Bab al-Tub police station in the center of town, killing ten policemen and two civilians. According to an Iraqi policeman at the scene, the explosives were hidden beneath a pile of melon and fruit. A policeman at the front gate said that he “opened the barbed wires for [the truck], thinking that he was trying to cross the street to unload his cargo in the nearby wholesale market… The suicide bomber was able to get close to the gate of the police station and blow himself up.”³⁵¹ A short time later, a suicide car bomber blew himself up outside the al-Kasik army base west of the city, killing fifteen civilians who worked at the base and wounding seven, although it is not clear if he was dressed as a civilian or driving a civilian car. Finally, that afternoon, a man wearing a hidden explosive vest pretended he needed medical attention and then blew himself up inside a small police station at al-Jamuri Hospital in Mosul, where many of the dead and wounded from the previous three attacks had been taken. That attack killed four policemen and wounded six.³⁵²

On September 14 and 15, 2005, more than one dozen suicide bomb attacks in Shi`a neighborhoods around Baghdad killed nearly 200 people, including civilians and Iraqi police. Al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility and said the attacks were retaliation for a joint U.S.-Iraqi counter-insurgency operation in the town of Tal Afar.<sup>353</sup> In one of the attacks, a suicide bomber driving a civilian car rammed into a police bus in the al-Dora district, killing fifteen policemen and five civilians. Four hours later, two suicide bombers in the same area killed another nine members of the police, although it is not clear if they were feigning civilian status.<sup>354</sup> In the most deadly incident, a suicide bomber in the Kadhimiyya neighborhood lured a large group of Shi`a men around his car with promises of work. In the midst of a large crowd, he detonated his explosives, killing at least 112 people.³⁵⁵

Attacks on Security Forces Causing Disproportionate Civilian Harm

Attacks by insurgents against legitimate military targets, such as Iraqi and multinational forces, have at times apparently caused harm to civilians far exceeding any expected military advantage. Such attacks violate the laws of war.³⁵⁶ Insurgent groups that use car bombs and suicide bombs in crowded civilian areas have shown a blatant disregard for civilian lives.

On April 21, 2004, for example, four car bombs exploded just after 7:00 a.m. in the southern city of Basra, killing sixty-eight people and wounding 200. The attackers detonated the bombs outside three police stations and a police academy, which would be legitimate targets if used for military purposes. Fifty-nine of the dead were civilians, including at least sixteen children.³⁵⁷ Human Rights Watch did not conduct field research in Basra to determine whether the police stations and police academy were performing a military function and therefore were legitimate targets, and if so, whether the expected military gains from the attacks justified the expected loss of civilian life. The available evidence, however, strongly suggests that the expected harm to civilians far exceeded the expected military gain.

“I saw a minibus full of children on fire,” said one man, who lived near the Sa`udiyya police station, which came under attack. “Fifteen of the eighteen passengers were killed and three badly wounded. I looked around and saw my leg bleeding and my neighbor lying dead on the floor torn apart.”³⁵⁸

A fifteen-year-old girl was about to board the bus when the explosion went off. “I had just left the house,” she told a journalist. “I opened the door and went out. I could see the bus. I found myself flying in the air and falling on the ground. I saw fire and smoke. It was a huge explosion. I couldn’t get up again.”³⁵⁹

On November 11, 2004, a suicide bomber in a Kia microbus detonated his explosives on Bagdhad’s Sadun Street, a busy commercial strip, during the morning rush hour. The target was a five-car convoy of Iraqi police, but the blast killed seventeen civilians and wounded twenty people, including some police, incinerated ten cars and destroyed shops along the street. Seven bodies arrived at al-Kindi hospital, six of them burnt beyond recognition, a doctor said. The blast carved a crater in the road and caused a building to collapse.³⁶⁰ Again, although Human Rights Watch did not investigate this case itself, the evidence strongly suggests that the expected harm to civilians far exceeded the expected military gain.

“No one should see what I saw: pieces of flesh, cut legs, burned bodies,” said Thae Khudhair Jasim, a twenty-three-year-old taxi driver, who suffered wounds to his neck and chest when the windshield of his taxi shattered from the blast.³⁶¹

“I entered the shop, then suddenly there was a huge blast that brought down the roof. Then I don’t know what happened next,” said Sami Hanun, a thirty-four-year-old worker who was wounded in the attack. “Right now, I can’t feel my legs. I don’t know if I can walk again.”³⁶²

“It was a car bomb directed at our patrol, but it hit civilians,” said Iraqi police officer Hadi `Umar, who cut his head on broken glass. “We’re still trying to find people under the rubble.”³⁶³

In a number of reported incidents, insurgents have apparently caused disproportionate civilian deaths in attacks on U.S. forces. On September 30, 2004, for example, two car bombs exploded at a ribbon-cutting ceremony outside a recently reconstructed sewage pumping station in Baghdad’s Hay al-`Amal neighborhood, killing forty-one people, more than thirty of them children. The target was apparently a convoy of U.S. soldiers from the First Calvary Division who were attending the ceremony and distributing candy to children outside the station when the bombs exploded. Ten soldiers were injured, the U.S. military said.³⁶⁴

“I went out after the first explosion and then got hit by the second. I felt my leg crack, and I fell,” said Karab `Abd al-Karim, aged sixteen.³⁶⁵ “I hate the people who did this. But I also blame the Americans, they came into our neighborhood and brought this with them,” said the father of nine-year-old Muhammad Akhbar Yunis, who was hit by shrapnel in the arm.³⁶⁶

Again, Human Rights Watch did not conduct field research into this incident, but the fact that forty-one civilians died, many of them children, in an attack on soldiers opening a pumping station strongly suggests that the expected civilian cost far outweighed any anticipated military gain.