London — A week after at least 14 Iraqi civilians were killed in an explosion that ripped through a market in Baghdad, allegations still are being traded about who was responsible for that incident and another one on Friday that killed at least 60 civilians in another Baghdad neighbourhood.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair entered the fray yesterday, denying suggestions that the first marketplace bombing resulted from a wayward coalition missile.
"It is increasingly probable that that was not a coalition bomb," Mr. Blair told the House of Commons. "It takes us time to investigate this, but there was no target near it, and we do not believe it was one of our bombs."
Earlier, Mr. Blair's office said it has intelligence reports that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein replaced his air-defence commander because of the poor performance of Iraq's air-defence system.
"A number of their surface-to-air missiles have fallen back into Baghdad," a spokesman for Mr. Blair said. "Civil-defence workers have been instructed to retrieve missile fragments where missiles have fallen."
But a British expert on missile systems believes it is likely that both incidents were caused by coalition missiles, and he criticized U.S. and British officials for failing to make public any evidence that would make it possible to identify who is responsible.
Rob Hewson, editor of Jane's Air Launched Weapons, said in an interview that "somewhere between 7 and 10 per cent of all precision-guided weapons do go astray."
Mr. Hewson said that coalition officials have refused to divulge basic information that could help clear them of blame. The coalition still has not made public the aircraft that were active in the area, the weapons used, whether all weapons are accounted for and all targets hit. Mr. Hewson said that information on the success of strikes could come from satellite or aerial surveillance or from special forces likely in Baghdad that help choose targets and report on the effectiveness of strikes.
"If one of your [targeted] buildings isn't hit, it's reasonable to say that your missile didn't make it," Mr. Hewson said. "They have chosen not to answer any of these questions, which certainly doesn't help their case."
Mr. Hewson is not swayed by reports that Musahim Saab Al-Tikriti was fired as Iraq's air-defence chief despite being a cousin of Mr. Hussein. He believes Mr. Al-Tikriti was replaced before the first marketplace explosion last week.
But Mr. Blair's spokesman was far from definitive in blaming the Iraqis, saying only that "these facts may offer a possible explanation," and adding that "people should not rush to judgment."
Added to the mix is a report from Baghdad, published in Sunday's edition of Britian's The Independent newspaper, saying that a piece of metal found on the site of Friday's explosion carries identification numbers purported to have come from the missile responsible for the carnage. The report says 62 died people in their homes or while shopping after explosions in a market district in a Baghdad suburb.
Mr. Hewson said there are grounds to believe that these are "identifiable NATO system inventory numbers" that could come from a U.S. missile. However, the fragment could have been moved to the site from many other targets that the coalition has hit in Baghdad during the past two weeks.
In the end, though, the proof is not there. "We do not have enough evidence one way or the other to make a pronouncement," he concluded.
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