The Amiriyah shelter bombing was an aerial bombing attack that killed at least 408 civilians on 13 February 1991 during the
Persian Gulf War
The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...
, when an
air-raid shelter
Air raid shelters are structures for the protection of non-combatants as well as combatants against enemy attacks from the air. They are similar to bunkers in many regards, although they are not designed to defend against ground attack (but many ...
("Public Shelter No. 25") in the
Amiriyah neighborhood of
Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...
,
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
, was destroyed by the
U.S. Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...
with two
GBU-27 Paveway III
The GBU-27 Paveway III (Guided Bomb Unit) is a laser-guided bomb with bunker buster capabilities, it is a GBU-24 Paveway III (fitted on the warhead of the BLU-109 bomb body) that has been redesigned to be used by the F-117A Nighthawk stealth groun ...
laser-guided "smart bombs".
The
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
was responsible for the decision to target the Amiriyah shelter. The
U.S. Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secur ...
stated that they "knew the Ameriyya facility had been used as a civil-defense shelter during the Iran–Iraq War",
[Human Rights Watch]
Needless Deaths In The Gulf War: Civilian Casualties During the Air Campaign and Violations of the Laws of War
1991. while the
U.S. military
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is the ...
stated they believed the shelter was no longer a civil defense shelter, and that they believed it had been converted to a command center or a military personnel bunker.
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...
stated that, "The United States' failure to give such a warning before proceeding with the disastrous attack on the Ameriyya shelter was a serious violation of the laws of war".
Background
The Amiriyah shelter was used in the
Iran–Iraq War
The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for almost eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Council ...
and the
Persian Gulf War
The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...
by hundreds of civilians. According to the U.S. military, the shelter at Amiriyah had been targeted because it fit the profile of a military command center; electronic signals from the locality had been reported as coming from the site, and spy satellites had observed people and vehicles moving in and out of the shelter.
Charles E. Allen, the
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
's National Intelligence Officer for Warning, supported the selection of bomb targets during the Persian Gulf War. He coordinated intelligence with Colonel
John Warden, who headed the U.S. Air Force's planning cell known as "Checkmate". On 10 February 1991, Allen presented his estimate to Colonel Warden that Public Shelter Number 25 in the southwestern Baghdad suburb of Amiriyah had become an alternative command post and showed no sign of being used as a civilian bomb shelter.
[Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War, ]Rick Atkinson
Lawrence Rush "Rick" Atkinson IV (born November 15, 1952) is an American author, most recently of ''The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775–1777'', the first volume in the Revolution Trilogy. He has won Pulit ...
, 1993, pp. 284–285. However, Human Rights Watch noted in 1991, "It is now well established, through interviews with neighborhood residents, that the Ameriyya structure was plainly marked as a public shelter and was used throughout the air war by large numbers of civilians".
A former
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...
general who worked as "the senior targeting officer for the
Royal Saudi Air Force
The Royal Saudi Air Force ( ar, الْقُوَّاتُ الْجَوِّيَّةُ الْمَلَكِيَّةْ ٱلسُّعُوْدِيَّة, Al-Quwwat Al-Jawiyah Al-Malakiyah as-Su’udiyah) (RSAF) is the aviation branch of the Saudi Arabia ...
", an "impeccable source" according to
Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk (12 July 194630 October 2020) was a writer and journalist who held British and Irish citizenship. He was critical of United States foreign policy in the Middle East, and the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians. His stanc ...
, said in the aftermath of the bombing that "
ichard I.Neal
Neal (Neil) is a given masculine name and surname of Gaelic and Irish origin. The name is an Anglicisation of the Irish Niall which is of disputed derivation. The Irish name may be derived from words meaning "cloud", "passionate", "victory", "hono ...
talked about camouflage on the roof of the bunker. But I am not of the belief that any of the bunkers around Baghdad have camouflage on them. There is said to have been barbed wire there but that's normal in Baghdad... There's not a single soul in the American military who believes that this was a command-and-control bunker... We thought it was a military personnel bunker. Any military bunker is assumed to have some civilians in it. We have attacked bunkers where we assume there are women and children who are members of the families of military personnel who are allowed in the military bunkers".
Satellite photos and electronic intercepts indicating this alternative use as a command and control center were regarded as circumstantial and unconvincing to Brigadier General
Buster Glosson
Lieutenant General Buster Cleveland Glosson (born March 14, 1942) was the deputy chief of staff for plans and operations at the headquarters of the United States Air Force (USAF) in Washington D.C. He was responsible to the secretary of the Air F ...
, who had primary responsibility for targeting. Glosson's comment was that the assessment wasn't "worth a shit". On 11 February, Shelter Number 25 was added to the USAF's attack plan.
Bombing
![Sally4](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Sally4.jpg)
![Incinerated Children](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Incinerated_Children_.jpg)
At 04:30 on the morning of 13 February, two
F-117
The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk is a retired American single-seat, twin-engine stealth attack aircraft developed by Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works division and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF). It was the first operational air ...
stealth bombers each dropped a GBU-27 laser-guided bomb on the shelter. The first bomb cut through of reinforced concrete before a time-delayed fuse exploded. Minutes later, the second bomb followed the path cut by the first bomb. Neighborhood residents heard screams as people tried to get out of the shelter. They screamed for four minutes. After the second bomb hit, the screaming ceased.
At the time of the bombing, hundreds of Iraqi civilians, mostly women and children, were sheltering in the building; many were apparently sleeping. More than 1,500 people were killed in total; reports on precise numbers vary, and the registration book was incinerated in the blast.
[Felicity Arbuthnot, , 13 February 2007.] People staying in the upper level were incinerated by heat, while boiling water from the shelter's water tank was responsible for the rest of the fatalities.
Not all who died died immediately; black, incinerated handprints of some victims remain fused to the concrete ceiling of the shelter, and can still be seen today. The blast sent shrapnel into surrounding buildings, shattering glass windows and splintering their foundations.
Reactions
A number of foreign governments responded to the bombing at Amiriyah with mourning, outrage, and calls for investigations.
Jordan
Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...
declared three days of mourning.
Algerian
Algerian may refer to:
* Something of, or related to Algeria
* Algerian people
This article is about the demographic features of the population of Algeria, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, econo ...
and
Sudanese governing parties condemned the bombing as a "paroxysm of terror and barbarism" and a "hideous, bloody massacre" respectively.
Jordan
Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...
and
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
called for an international inquiry into the bombing, and Spain urged the U.S. to move its attacks away from Iraq itself, and concentrate instead on occupied
Kuwait
Kuwait (; ar, الكويت ', or ), officially the State of Kuwait ( ar, دولة الكويت '), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated in the northern edge of Eastern Arabia at the tip of the Persian Gulf, bordering Iraq to the nort ...
.
Legacy
Memorial
![Victim Sally Ahmad Salman](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Victim_Sally_Ahmad_Salman_.jpg)
The shelter is currently maintained as it was after the blast, as a memorial to those who died within it, featuring photos of those killed. According to visitors' reports, Umm Greyda, a woman who lost eight children in the bombing, moved into the shelter to help create the memorial, and serves as its primary guide.
[John Dear, S. J.]
Iraq Journal: Notes from a peace delegation to a ravaged land
''Sojourners Magazine'', 1999.[Riverbend]
15 February 2004.
Subsequent debate
Jeremy Bowen
Jeremy Francis John Bowen (born 6 February 1960) is a Welsh journalist and television presenter.
He was the BBC's Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem between 1995 and 2000 and the BBC Middle East editor from 2005 to 2022, before being ...
, a BBC correspondent, was one of the first reporters on the scene. Bowen was given access to the site and found no evidence of military use.
[Report aired on ''BBC 1'', 14 February 1991]
The White House, in a report titled ''Apparatus of Lies: Crafting Tragedy'', states that U.S. intelligence sources reported the shelter was being used for military command purposes. The report goes on to accuse the Iraqi government of deliberately keeping "select civilians" in a military facility at Amiriyah.
[White House]
Crafting Tragedy
According
Jane's Information Group
Jane's Information Group, now styled Janes, is a global open-source intelligence company specialising in military, national security, aerospace and transport topics, whose name derives from British author Fred T. Jane.
History
Jane's Informatio ...
'','' the signals intelligence observed at the shelter was from an aerial antenna that was connected to a communications center some away.
[Scott Peterson,]
'Smarter' bombs still hit civilians
''Christian Science Monitor,'' 22 October 2002.
Legality
Seven Iraqi families living in Belgium who lost relatives in the bombing launched a lawsuit against former
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
*President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; pr ...
, former
Secretary of Defense
A defence minister or minister of defence is a cabinet official position in charge of a ministry of defense, which regulates the armed forces in sovereign states. The role of a defence minister varies considerably from country to country; in som ...
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce Cheney ( ; born January 30, 1941) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. He is currently the oldest living former U ...
, former
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) is the presiding officer of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The chairman is the highest-ranking and most senior military officer in the United States Armed Forces Chairman: app ...
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell ( ; April 5, 1937 – October 18, 2021) was an American politician, statesman, diplomat, and United States Army officer who served as the 65th United States Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African ...
, and
General
A general officer is an Officer (armed forces), officer of highest military ranks, high rank in the army, armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry.
In some usages the term "general officer" refers t ...
Norman Schwarzkopf
Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. (; August 22, 1934 – December 27, 2012) was a United States Army general. While serving as the commander of United States Central Command, he led all coalition forces in the Gulf War.
Born in Trenton, Ne ...
for committing what they claim were
war crimes in the 1991 bombing. The suit was brought under
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
's
universal jurisdiction
Universal jurisdiction is a legal principle that allows states or international organizations to claim criminal jurisdiction over an accused person regardless of where the alleged crime was committed, and regardless of the accused's nationality, ...
guarantees in March 2003, but was dismissed in September following their restriction to Belgian nationals and residents in August 2003.
In culture
A character from the play ''
Nine Parts of Desire'', Umm Gheda, is a caretaker of the bombed shelter.
[Hirschhorn, Joel.]
Review: ‘Nine Parts of Desire’
. ''Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
''. 15 September 2005. Retrieved on 12 April 2014.
Thom Yorke of
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band formed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards); brothers Jonny Greenwood (lead guitar, keyboards, other instruments) and Colin Greenwood (bass) ...
wrote the song "I Will" about the bombing, which was published on the band's sixth studio album ''
Hail to the Thief
''Hail to the Thief'' is the sixth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was released on 9 June 2003 through Parlophone internationally and a day later through Capitol Records in the United States. It was the last album released ...
''.
A short film by the poet Robert Minhinnick, ''Black Hands'', features his poem of the same name and his own footage of the shelter.
Naseer Shamma
Naseer Shamma ( ar, نصير شمه) is an Iraqi musician and oud player.
He was born in 1963 in Kut, a city on the Tigris River. He began studying the oud at the age of 12 in Baghdad, following in the footsteps of Jamil and Munir Bashir. He re ...
, an Iraqi
Oud
, image=File:oud2.jpg
, image_capt=Syrian oud made by Abdo Nahat in 1921
, background=
, classification=
* String instruments
*Necked bowl lutes
, hornbostel_sachs=321.321-6
, hornbostel_sachs_desc=Composite chordophone sounded with a plectrum
, ...
player, has composed a solo Oud piece "Happened at al-Amiriyya" which is a musical description of the event.
In the documentary ''Homeland: Iraq Year Zero'', the shelter, since converted to a memorial, is toured by the director's family in the days prior to the 2003 invasion.
Notes
References
Further reading
* Boustany, Nora (''The Washington Post'' Foreign Service).
Bombs Killed Victims as They Slept. ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
''. Thursday, 14 February 1991. p. A01.
External links
''The Battle for Hearts and Minds'' (''The Washington Post'', 1998)
Image of the damaged roof and floor.External view of the shelter.Image of Amiriyah Bombing Aftermath.
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Mass murder in Iraq
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