Hillah, Iraq.

Mass Grave Found Near Baghdad, Forces Say

Thirty bodies were found Sunday in a grave south of Baghdad, Iraqi forces said. Iraqi commandos were led to the grave in the Owerij industrial district in southern Baghdad after interrogating insurgents detained in a raid earlier in the day, Col. Selam al-Maamuri of the Interior Ministry said. The grave, which al-Maamuri estimated was 10 to 14 days old, included the bodies of two women. Al-Maamuri did not identify the dead or say how they were killed.

One insurgent was killed in the raid early Sunday that led to the grave and 13 others were detained, including an Egyptian and a Sudanese man, al-Maamuri said. Some of the detained men confessed to dumping bodies in the grave, he said.

The first assault element turned into the southern entrance of the warehouse complex that was the objective area, and immediately came under fire. The bad guys had reason to be scared. They were wanted for kidnapping, torturing, and killing Iraqis who helped Coalition Forces. Their fire was immediately returned, both light arms and the heavier machine guns on the humvees. The weapons’ reports were only slightly dulled by the armor of my humvee. The informant got a bitconfused about whether we were at the right target, and the Captain asked for a confirmation of the grid. It seemed pretty apparent to me that we were in the right place, as evidenced by the brisk exchange of gunfire. The Warrant Officer checked his GPS, and looked for the briefing sheet that had the target grid. He was later heard to comment, “There are bullets flying everywhere, and I can’t find my pen!”, an telling statement on the role of officers in modern combat.

The grid confirmed, the good guys poured out of their vehicles, and began engaging the defenders in earnest. My assault force moved forward to secure the northern side of the complex. The lead humvee pulled into the driveway, followed by two SWAT vehicles, with Anglico in the rear. Suddenly, the SWAT vehicles stopped. We honked to get them moving so that we could sprint our vehicle to our assigned spot at the north eastern edge of the compound, providing rear security and squirter control. The SWAT in the rear of their pickup trucks looked at us dully. We honked again, and they again refused to move. I jumped out of the vehicle, and began yelling at the SWAT. Machine gun fire rattled from the southern area of the complex. The SWAT driver saw me waving him forward, and Staff Sergeant joined me in getting the SWAT drivers to move off the driveway. I then saw the lead Special Forces humvee had also stopped in the road, which struck me as strange. It is not far fetched for SWAT to just stop where ever, shoot all their bullets, or commence smoking, but the Special Forces were another matter entirely. I ran up to the vehicle to find the interpreter spreadeagle on the road, tended by a Green Beret medic. The interpreter’s face was covered in blood.”Oh, man,” I thought, “He took one between the running lights.” The interpreter moaned. “Good sign”, I thought. I knelt down by the medic to provide security while Staff Sergeant ran back to our vehicle so we could get to our assigned spot.”What happened?” I asked when the medic had a moment.”He fell out of the back of the truck, and hit the bridge of his nose on the bumper.”

I could only guess how much that hurt. The medic asked the interpreter some questions. He could neither see nor move. My guess was that he couldn’t see because his eyes were filled with blood. His neck was an entirely different matter. I kept a watch over the warehouses and northern wall while SWAT finally began to take up security positions. The interpreter regained vision, and then was able to sit up. Having determined that he had no massive neck or head injuries, the medic moved him off to the side of the road, where he was guarded by a couple of SWAT guys. The medic moved off to continue the assault, and I began to head towards my vehicle which had finally moved into position at the far eastern end of the objective area. The gunfire on the south side continued, but things were quiet on the north, which made me even more nervous.I quickly learned how hard it is to fun fast in a low crouch. Remembering what I learned from countless reruns, I moved from shadow to shadow, varying my pace, and occasionally just stopping to take a look around. I resisted the temptation to yell “Serpentine!” randomly. This was a thoroughly ridiculous method of movement, given to neither speed nor grace, but as I managed to get near my vehicle without incident, it must have worked.

I radioed Staff Sergeant, “Hey, Staff Sergeant, I am approaching the vehicle.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t shoot me.”
“Right, sir.”
I pulled my Mag Light out of my pocket (oorah, Mag Light) to flash the vehicle a couple of times. They returned my flash. I went back to my low crouch run, and finally got up where I was supposed to be.
“Anything going on?”
“No, sir. Quiet.”
“Did you clear that little building?”, I asked, pointing to a shack near our vehicle.
“Just waiting for you, sir.”
“Let’s go.”

We told our gunner where we were going, and went over to the shack. We kicked down the door, and swept inside. Nothing.

I covered Staff Sergeant while he opened up a door to find a woman with her children inside. He looked around with his flashlight, and finding no males, he motioned for the woman to keep inside. She nodded fervently, and we grinned at her kids.

Back outside, we took cover to watch over the fields on the back of the complex. I watched a family of rabbits move through the brush, eating dry stalks of weeds as the gunfire peaked, then fell off. The Green Berets radioed that SWAT had shot one of the defenders, and the others had given up. The southern assault element rounded up the prisoners, and began to move north towards our position for link up. I watched them come through the warehouse complex, signal us, then advance when they were recognized.We turned our attention to the two remaining buildings on the far eastern edge of the complex. One was the alleged ‘execution room’ where the bad guys made videos of the torture sessions, and subsequently murdered their kidnap victims. The other was just a large empty building. There was no way to get to either building directly, so we decided to head back out to the street, and enter on the northern edge of the complex. We turned around, and headed back out. I watched the prisoners being led by the SWAT officers to the SWAT vehicles for transportation.

Out on the street, our assault element turned in, but stopped as the southern assault element radioed that they were mounting up to join us. The Anglico vehicle was tasked to wait on the road to direct the second assault element to the first. I watched the humvees from the nearby American camp drive up and down the road, keeping the night traffic stopped. These vehicles had volunteered to support us with weapons and traffic control, freeing us to assault the targets. They were doing a good job of keeping the locals back from the objective area. A sizable crowd had been drawn by the gunfire.I finally saw the lead vehicle, commanded by the Special Forces Team Sergeant, driving up the road to meet us. The vehicle turned into the entrance, and we followed behind.

The radio crackled to life with traffic from one of the support humvees. They had been taken under fire from an industrial complex on the southwest side of the target. The Team Sergeant’s vehicle spun a quick turn in the dirt, and raced back out to the road, followed by two SWAT. Staff Sergeant and I looked at each other, and he whipped our vehicle around to join the others. We crossed the eastbound lane, and headed south towards a large complex surrounded by a concrete wall at least twenty feet tall. The wall was only interrupted by two huge metal doors that ran from the ground to nearly the top of the wall. The Special Forces vehicle stopped in front of it, and after a hurried conference, the vehicle backed up a bit to get a running start at the gate. They crashed through the right hand gate. The bottom hinge sprung, but the top managed to hold, leaving the door hanging precariously by a suddenly inadequately sized piece of metal. The SWAT vehicle leapt forward, then though better of it, skidding to a halt. There was some confusion that we resolved by cutting to the head of the line. As we barreled towards the gate, I yelled at the gunner to get his head down. The lance corporal stuck his head down to ask, “What did you say, sir?”

To his very great credit, Staff Sergeant yelled “Ramming speed!” as we crashed through the gate, which fell on top of the vehicle, balancing for a moment on the turret. As we pushed through, the massive door slid off the vehicle, dislodging our air filter. The handle of the door clanged onto the hood, becoming lodged. The door fell away, leaving the handle wedged, and the air filter rolling around. The gunner let fly with a string of expletives harsh even by naval standards.

We headed towards the back of what appeared to be a concrete factory, followed by two SWAT. The lead SF vehicle turned a lazy loop to head back to the gate. We let the SWAT go with them as we spun around for a quick departure. The air filter finally fell off the hood, and rolled around in the dirt before coming to a stop at the end of a driveway of a house located at the rear of the property. We parked in the middle of the compound, using a couple of massive concrete barriers for cover. I hopped out, and took a knee.

The area was lit with oversized mercury vapor lamps. They were bright enough to wash out my night vision devices, but not bright enough to see bad guys. I use monocular night vision devices so I can go from synthetic vision to real vision (normally, I prefer digital over analog in anything) by merely closing one eye. Actually, I generally just use both eyes at the same time. My brain has gotten accustomed to this, generally providing a combination green/colored picture. I kept looking around for bad guys or zombies, but I couldn’t see much at all. Not being able to see much at all is not the preferred vision quality when there is automatic weapons fire within hearing. I considered shooting out the flood lights, but after a brief conference with Staff Sergeant, we both agreed that this was a bad idea. SWAT loves to shoot guns, and they really don’t need much of a reason to blast away all their ammo. Since they were at our backs, we figured there was less of a threat from booger eaters sneaking up on us than the threat of scaring SWAT with gunfire and sudden darkness.

The Special Forces and the SWAT assaulters had moved up to the building from which the gunfire was reported. It was a massive brick edifice, with a door set into the side. The Green Berets set a charge, and the door shuddered, but remained intact with only a hole in the center. They set another charge, and again the door remained standing. The third charge actually destroyed the door, revealing the brick wall behind the apparently cosmetic door.We watched the assaulters patrol around to the side of the building. Not finding anyone inside, they scouted around the perimeter. The shooter had escaped.

We began remounting the vehicles to go join up with the assault element that had cleared the execution house and discovered the mass grave. I plucked the gate handle off the hood, keeping it for a souvenir. We drove back around to pick up the air filter, then headed back out to meet up with the convoy. From there, we headed up to the nearby American base to drop off our support elements. We headed to their chow hall (open twenty four hours a day!), but six hours of combat had left me more tired than hungry. I laid on the hood of the humvee, but the engine was too hot. I climbed up on the roof to doze while the others ate. Staff Sergeant must have had a few Red Bulls, as he kept playing Movie Trivia while I was trying to doze as we drove back. We made it back without incident, other than I missed a Top Gun movie quote.We arrested thirteen bad guys who admitted to kidnapping, torture, and murder. The Sudanese and Egyptian were known Al Qaeda, and the others are likely members. I felt good about getting these guys off the street. What the article didn’t mention is that one of the ‘women’ discovered in the mass grave was a little girl, estimated at less than ten years old.