Why would they blame the U.S.?

[Chewbacca]

These reactions to suicide bombings seem surreal... I don't understand. Do any Iraqis in this town believe the official story? If so, it wasn't report upon in this article.

Link
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Blast shows deep Iraqi mistrust of Americans
By Michael Georgy
REUTERS

HILLA, Iraq – Iraqis were probably asleep when two explosions hit a Polish-run military base, killing at least 11 people. But that didn't stop them from drawing the shocking conclusion that U.S. planes fired rockets at them.

Polish forces said the blasts were caused by two suicide car bombers, one of which stopped after troops fired on it while the other hit the base's concrete wall and exploded. They said they had found the bodies of the two drivers.

The attack targeted a military base in Hilla, a town south of Baghdad where U.S. troops were once welcomed, killing 11 Iraqis and wounding more than 100 people. Some 58 foreign troops, part of the U.S.-led coalition, were among the wounded.

But Iraqis were in no mood for logic.

Young boys standing along railroad tracks near the blast site picked up mangled metal from car bumpers and said it was part of a rocket.

"We heard the sound of a plane overhead and a rocket landed and then a second rocket landed," said Omar Zayed, 17, who lives near the site of the explosion. "It was the Americans."

The blasts blew the facing and roofs off of homes outside the base, and, like car bombs last week that killed about 100 people as they enlisted in the Iraqi army and police, they deepened suspicions of Iraq's occupiers.

Amid the tragedy at Hilla General Teaching Hospital, patients and doctors were eager to condemn the Americans, who once enjoyed support in this mostly Shi'ite Muslim town after they toppled Saddam in April.

"This is typical of the Americans. We know what they are like," said Dr. Sattar al-Jishaamee. "People will be much more anti-American now."


MOURNING MIXES WITH ANGER

Polish Lt. Col. Robert Strzelecki told Reuters guards outside the base managed to stop one car by shooting at it but a second car exploded after smashing into a wall.

There are very few American troops visible in the streets of Hilla, which is controlled mostly by Polish soldiers, part of the multinational forces in south Iraq.

But Iraqi anger is still focused on the Americans.

"I was sleeping when I heard one rocket and then another. It was American planes firing rockets. I felt blood dripping down my head," said Jamal Amin, 19, from his hospital bed.

Two young boys who were wounded lost their parents in the blast. One of them, 10-year-old Seif Saleh, complained of pain and asked for his father. As he spoke, his parents' coffins were transported into the hospital.

In the next bed a bandaged teenage boy who said he lost his hand to a cluster bomb two days ago received treatment for new wounds from the blast.

Doctors checked wounds and relatives of the dead sobbed on the hallway floors as anti-American anger spread to patients who were not even involved in the blast.

"The Americans fired one rocket and then another one which exploded. That's what I heard," said one patient.

Hospital director Mohammed al-Taee sat in his office trying to determine the last name of a woman killed in the blasts.

"There is the official version of what happened and the real version. It was the Americans," said his assistant out loud.

[InjaYew]

Blast shows deep Iraqi mistrust of Americans

Well duh. Wonder why...