[Marinir] BBC: US. 'Friendly Fire' at Irak War.

[Hong Gie]

'I just feel extremely lucky to be alive'

 By Fred Scott
BBC cameraman

On 6 April, a BBC team in northern Iraq headed by world affairs editor
John Simpson witnessed one of the worst friendly fire incidents of the war.
A US bomb fired at American and Kurdish soldiers killed 16 people,
including a BBC translator. Fred Scott tells BBC News Online his story.
 We had talked about getting misidentified and hit by friendly fire from the
air, given where we were I think that was a very real risk. However, I was
still more worried about taking a rocket through the radiator or driving
over a mine.

Blood on the lens of Fred Scott's camera
On the morning of 6 April, we set off in three vehicles and crossed a set of
earthen barriers that had been put across the road by the Iraqis.
We kept the car pointed forward, but I couldn't see a single car in front of
us and this set my alarm bells going. Every other barrier we had crossed had
a carnival of armed guys rolling up and down it.
We had a discussion about whether to go back when we were overtaken by
a convoy of vehicles which included a lot of Kurdish forces and American
special forces. We followed them but the convoy came to a gradual halt at
a T-junction.

The screams
I could hear a plane circling overhead so I opened the door and got off. I
remember looking up and seeing two American planes circling overhead.
I'd never seen them that low before - about 500 feet or so and I thought:
"at last, an easy picture of one of these things".
 There was some sort of a white blast. I don't recall feeling it. I was up
and then I was down. I felt scorched. Fred Scott
Then I saw something fly across my left shoulder with a red nose on it, but
it all seemed kind of two-dimensional, like a cartoon bomb. I think I recall
hearing someone shout a warning. But the next thing I knew I was face
down on the road.
There was some sort of a white blast. I don't recall feeling it. I was up
and then I was down. I felt scorched. I just remember kind of wriggling a
bit - feeling I had kind of circulation in my limbs and trying to haul
myself up.
I don't actually remember hearing very much. So it was really shocking
listening to the tape later to hear how much noise there was going around,
the screams, the bodies slumped against the horns of the cars, car alarms
having gone off.
I started to crawl and just remember thinking "they're coming back, they're
going to come back and hit us again," because it's what we'd seen every
other time. They would just keep circling and then either they would strafe
us or drop another bomb.

Completely numb
Then I thought, the camera. I had no idea where it was. I rolled over and
saw it wasn't far from me and got it working. I then just tried to scramble
to try and get into some sort of depression in the ground and just hide.

BBC security man Craig Summers rescues equipment
Looking into the viewfinder I knew I was bleeding, I couldn't get my left
eye open and my whole head was completely numb so I didn't know whether
I'd actually lost my eye.
At this point me, John Simpson and Dragon Petrovic (a BBC fixer) suddenly
found each other. I'd just instantly assumed that we were all dead or half
of us were dead.
We pulled ourselves together and moved across the road. One of the Americans
said that they'd called off the airplanes.
At this point we saw Craig Summers (BBC security advisor) who told us that
he and Tom Giles (Panorama producer) and the drivers were all okay but that
there were two people still missing.
Bad news
There was Abdullah (a BBC fixer) who no one had seen, and Kamaran Abdurazaq
Muhamed (BBC translator). It only took a moment for Craig to spot Kamaran
who was across the road and very close to the worst of the blast.
He was lying on a little hillock and must have been thrown some distance.
Craig immediately ran over to him and got some American medics to look at
him but he was in very, very bad shape.

Fred Scott in Iraq before the friendly fire incident
Craig then managed to stop one of the Kurdish soldiers from stealing our
last functioning vehicle and we took it down the hill. It was here that we
were told that Abdullah was alright - he'd gone off to hospital.
It was at this point we were told that Kamaran had died, strangely we just
kind of milled around for a bit.
To be honest, I don't think I've fully come to terms with it. He was a very
young man who hadn't really seen very much in life and he was just snuffed
out, and he died a very painful death as well.
Grateful
It's not that any of us were more deserving of death, but I think it's fair
to say he was the least deserving. The longer I did this job, it was always
inevitable something like this would come.
But weighing it all up it's incredible to think that myself and the rest of
us, apart from Kamaran, walked away from it.

TV cars in the convoy on fire after friendly fire incident in Iraq
There are so many complicated things involved, it's impossible to know
where you even start with explaining how I feel about it.
I'm not particularly angry, not feeling in the least bit sort of forgiving.
There's a war, something terrible happened but it clearly didn't need to,
but how do you feel?
I just feel extremely lucky and grateful to be alive and basically healthy
when so many others aren't. But from there, I don't know.




Last Updated: Sunday, 26 October, 2003, 21:55 GMT

'In the line of fire'
In the line of fire - with John Simpson will be broadcast on BBC One on
Sunday, 9 November, 2003 at 21:00 GMT.
When BBC world affairs editor John Simpson and his team set out to northern
Iraq it was to report on the looming war against Saddam Hussein.
What none of them knew was that in only a few weeks time they would find
themselves at the centre of the most lethal recorded friendly fire incident
of the war.
While filming at a cross-roads in northern Iraq on April 6, a US Navy jet
launched a bomb into a crowd of US and Kurdish soldiers who the BBC
team were accompanying.
The bomb killed at least 16 people, including a member of the BBC team.
45 were injured.
In the seconds that followed, BBC cameraman Fred Scott began to film the
disaster as it unfolded. He filmed the dead and the dying and the desperate
moments in which friends, colleagues and comrades tried to find out who was
alive and who was dead.
His remarkable footage - and the footage of others who were also at the
scene - provide a unique insight into the horror of war.
This special edition of Panorama tells the story of the dramatic battle on
the northern front of Iraq as seen through the eyes of the people who became
caught up in it.
Using the personal testimony of the journalists themselves, US pilots flying
missions at the time and others touched by events - it documents a
remarkable confrontation in which lightly armed Kurds aided by a few US
Special Forces and US jets faced down a massive Iraqi force of well-armed
soldiers.
It also tells the story of what can happen when such a high-risk strategy
goes wrong.
Production team:
Reporter: John Simpson
Producer: Tom Giles
Assistant Producers: Richard Grange, Sarah Mole
Deputy Editors: Andy Bell, Sam Collyns
Editor: Mike Robinson



Last Updated: Saturday, 8 November, 2003, 02:28 GMT
"Panorama man saved by phone call'
by Tom Giles
Panorama producer

 I remember just getting of the phone, the car stopped, I saw some Americans
in the corner of my eye, guys I knew were special forces, and I immediately
felt fine, I felt this is safe.

The plane swooping before the incident
As we pulled up I remember I saw a tank as well off the side of the road, I
jumped out of the car, the other car, with John Simpson and Fred Scott
(cameraman) had already got there.
I'd no idea really where they all were, I heard Fred just yell at me "could
you get the tripod". He'd seen these planes coming down very low and wanted
to get a shot.
They produced an absolutely overwhelming noise, but in no way at all did you
feel any sense of threat because they were Americans. There were loads of
senior Kurds all over the place and time and time again, when we'd gone down
these roads, that just meant things were secure.
Then my phone went and it was my mum, my mother just calling to say,
"Hi Tom how are you, Happy Birthday"
Sound of freedom
Everything in me said get out. Just run. Get out, because every time we'd
filmed anything like this before, there had always been another bomb.

Tom Giles
Of course in all the fuss it had slightly slipped my mind - it was my
birthday. And you know it just seemed very funny, being in the middle of
this conflict and my mum calling to wish me happy birthday.
I said to her: "You know we're nearly on the outskirts of Kirkuk. It's all
very exciting". And I joked to her, because I knew she wasn't terribly keen
on the war: "listen mum, it's the sound of freedom".
I then held the phone up and just at the moment the noise from the planes
became incredibly loud. It got even louder and then there was a bang and a
flash.
I saw a fire ball. It felt like it was heading towards the car. In a funny
way the bang felt almost like a car had just exploded, but I knew straight
away the moment that I saw it, the moment that I heard it, I knew what had
happened, I knew that that sound - that plane had dropped something on us.
Everything in me said get out. Just run. Get out, because every time we'd
filmed anything like this before, there had always been another bomb.
Incredibly lucky

Panic and smoke filled the air after the attack
I just knew I had to just, just run, and I turned and I ran. I just saw this
sandbank, jumped over it and backed against it, just waiting for the next
one to go off.
Then I realised the phone was still in my hand, and I suddenly saw the
signal was full, and my mum was still there, she'd heard the whole thing.
I could hear a sort of hello, hello, so I took the phone and said: "Mum, I'm
fine, it's friendly fire, the Americans they're firing on us."
I was incredibly lucky. It wasn't so much that I was close to the explosion,
there were others who were closer than I was, but I was incredibly lucky
because I could have walked out in to an area where a large amount of
shrapnel, bodies and debris was blown out across the road.
I guess what saved my life was not walking out, and the reason I didn't walk
out was because my mother rang and wished me happy birthday.
In shock  You feel that something fantastically powerful and dreadful has
brushed past you.

Tom Giles
As I was behind the bank, one of our drivers - Abdul Bahset - suddenly
appeared. He was just in shock, just catatonic, he was a young guy and
you could see on his face, just total fear, absolute fear.
Then another driver Ali, jumped over as well, and he was howling, he had
shrapnel I think, I didn't know if it was shrapnel, or if he'd actually been
hit in the leg, but he was just howling in pain.
When I found Kamaran (BBC translator) he was obviously coming out of
unconsciousness, he was just groaning and his eyes were pushed back.
I think he was just in total shock, his whole body was in shock and you
could see there was a little bit of shrapnel in his throat, but that wasn't
the problem.
He was clearly breathing all right, and they were just trying to apply a
tourniquet to one of his legs when I suddenly saw his foot was just
virtually shorn off, the shoe wasn't even around.
Sad feeling

Tom Giles: Life saved by a phone call
He had his hand out and I held his hand. I remember holding his hand and
he seemed to come round - I just said: "Kamaran, I'm here, I'm here for you,
it's Tom, it's Tom".
I had to shout this, because I didn't know if he could hear. And in a way it
seems so sort of corny, it sounded almost the whole thing felt like
something from a dreadful sort of war movie where people shout these kind of
things at each other.
I honestly convinced myself that actually he was going to be okay because
the Americans were saying, there's no problems with his lungs, there's no
problem with his heart, and you could see there were no injuries to his
chest, which is just as well, because he didn't have flak jacket.
We got Kamaran on the truck, and I remember thinking, he's okay now, and
the truck drove off. But I had a really sad feeling when I saw Kamaran being
driven off. It's as though I should somehow have been with him and I wasn't.
I really thought he'd be okay.
When I got down the hill I saw Oggy (BBC News producer) who I'd spoken
to on the phone with the ambulances I'd asked him to send.
When I asked where Kamaran was he simply said: "Kamaran is dead."

Cruel
An American special forces operative walks past
I just felt like a complete idiot, why did I think he wasn't going to die,
why did I even think that? It's just incredible what you think of in those
situations.
I don't feel angry about the pilots, I don't really feel angry about the
incident at all, I think the pilots were doing a job, they obviously made a
dreadful mistake and I doubt that there isn't a moment that the pilot who
made that mistake doesn't think about making it.
But I'd like to think he's incredibly upset with himself that he did it and
I'd hate to think that he was made to feel that he hadn't done anything
wrong.
That may sound slightly cruel, but I wouldn't like the idea that he just got
slapped on the back and made to feel "that's war isn't it", because it was
so ridiculously avoidable.
As for Iraq, I didn't mind going back, in fact, in a strange way, I wanted
to go back. Mainly I wanted to see Kamaran's family, and I suppose I
wanted to go back to where it happened. I wanted to travel down that road
again.  Maybe I could have made sense of it all.

Memory burns
I thought it would finish off the whole process, put the whole thing to bed.
The moment I met Kamaran's sister Ariyan again - I knew it wouldn't be that
straightforward. She was very quiet and demure but her eyes were so full of
hurt and loss that it's still hard to forget them.
In many ways, the more time passes the more I have a stronger sense of
Kamaran's final minutes.
It's as if at the time, your senses - charged full of adrenalin - are numbed
to it all. Yet now the memory burns through quite strongly.
You feel that something fantastically powerful and dreadful has brushed past
you, making everything in life seem that much more transient and important
to appreciate.