Reporters with the Reuters and AP news agencies filmed evidence of the slaughter of up to 33 Iraqi civilians in a US bombardment yesterday in Babylon province, 80 miles south of Baghdad, as US forces stepped up preparations for an attack on the capital. Lara Marlowe reports from Baghdad
The videotapes show two pick-up trucks laden with dead bodies arriving at the hospital morgue in the town of Hilah.
Most of the dead are women and children, and have the sort of amputation wounds caused by cluster bombs, which are banned for use against civilians.
"This was done by US cluster bombs," a British-trained doctor, Dr Nazem al-Adali, said, speaking to the camera. "I appeal to all my colleagues in Britain to do something to stop this."
In the video, Dr al-Adali stands beside a bed bearing a little girl's body. Several lifeless girls are shown. A screaming man reaches into the back of a pick-up truck and pulls up the head and torso of a mutilated infant. "This is my baby. They are cowards. They are cowards," he cries out.
Two young men hide their faces with keffiyehs and wail in grief outside the morgue.
A wounded woman identified as Aliya Mukhtaf says her husband and six children were killed in the bombardment.
A man named Majid Jalil, whose wife and two children perished in the same attack, watches as doctors remove a bandage from the severed stub of a foot of his only surviving child. Blood spurts out as the bandage is removed.
These terrible images are likely to provoke renewed criticism of the US bombardment, even as a major engagement was reported between the Iraqi Republican Guard and US forces some 70km south of Baghdad.
The US may have used cluster bombs against a target in the Daura area of south Baghdad yesterday. An unusually powerful explosion there was followed by a ripple of smaller explosions and a huge fire.
Mr Mohamed Said al-Sahaf, the Iraqi Information Minister, told a press conference: "This morning the villains have bombarded a civilian quarter in Hila City, central Babylon."
He said nine children were killed in the bombardment, which struck the Nadir neighbourhood.
The hospital director, Dr Mortada Abbas, said aircraft bombarded a residential area and that there were up to 33 civilians killed and many more wounded.
A Reuters reporter counted 11 bodies, though his videotape appears to show more.
At the scene of the bombing, dozens of what seemed to be parts of cluster bombs equipped with small parachutes were peppered over a large area, an AFP correspondent at the site said.
Iraqi army soldiers were seen collecting the bomb pieces, which witnesses said coalition warplanes had dropped over the neighbourhood. The soldiers poured fuel on the bombs before setting them on fire to explode.
Dozens of homes were destroyed in the bombing.
"God take our revenge on America," a stunned man said repeatedly at the hospital. Hospital staff said the man's whole family was wiped out.
Some Iraqis saw significance in the fact that President Saddam did not personally read a televised message last night, though this was not the first time he has had a written message broadcast.
Urging Iraqis to fight advancing US and British forces, Mr Hussein said: "Hit them. Fight them. They are evil aggressors and they will be defeated."
The message was read by Mr al-Sahaf. In an appeal to Iraq's Shi'ite majority, President Saddam called on Muslims everywhere to seek immortality by joining the jihad against the US in Iraq.