Irish 'human shield' tells of Baghdad attacks

Irish anti-war activist Michael Birmingham has arrived in Jordan where he told Michael Jansen about life in Baghdad

"On Friday they asked me to leave," he said. "I don't really know why."

"Two Japanese and seven Christian peacemakers were also told to go because they had been taking photographs of bomb sites without permission and without a minder. We were put into three taxis and sent to the border. We left at 9.15 in a convoy."

One of the taxis had an accident. They were told by some Somali students who had left at the same time.

"We went back and found the car turned over alongside the road and blood on the seats. We drove to Rutba, the only town in the area, and asked for the hospital.

"We were first directed to the children's hospital which had been bombed out and completely destroyed. By luck we found the others at a clinic where they had been taken by an Iraqi with a pick-up truck who happened by."

After the four Americans were given first aid, the group decided to carry on.

"The people in Rutba were very scared, there had been American planes overhead. We couldn't find another taxi who would take us so we had to squash into two taxis, with one person lying down. By that time our drivers were terrified and drove like maniacs. We passed burnt out cars and buses along the road . . . At the border the Iraqis confiscated our cameras, my laptop and all my notes."

After two hours, they were allowed to walk, supporting the wounded, to the Jordanian checkpoint. A bus came and took them along with Jordanian and Somali medical students to the tented transit camp at Ruweished. The four injured people were brought to Amman by ambulance and the rest of the party came by bus along with five Jordanian medical students.

In Amman last night, safe now from the war he had hoped to help prevent by acting as a so-called "human shield", Michael Birmingham described how the conflict had begun for him. On the day before the war, the manager of his Tigris riverside hotel took away a monkey called Kofi, who lodged in a cage in the lobby. "For safety," Michael observed.

At two on the morning of the 20th "we received a call from someone in our office [the Voices in the Wilderness organisation] in New York who told us that CNN and others were saying missiles and planes would enter Iraqi airspace around the deadline of 4 a.m."

"I went to tell those in out group staying in nearby apartments and encountered Iraqi soldiers in the street. One huge man was a bit scary. He was pointing his gun and clicking its trigger at the hotel. But they made me sit down and drink tea and share their food. They just wanted to exchange information and joke. They were out in the street with only the protection of sandbags."

Back in the hotel most guests, including Iraqi families, were in the lobby drinking tea and listening to shortwave radio.

The Iraqis were equipped with torches and rations. They took their children down into the basement.

"We had opened the doors and taped up the windows so the glass would not shatter," Michael observed. "The explosions started all round us at about 5.30. Nothing was close, but the explosions were loud, and there was anti-aircraft fire. It stopped by 7.30-8.00."

That day there was no bombing during daylight hours. The day after the war began, Friday, there was a soccer match. "No one puts them off their football. The second Friday they also had a match," Michael remarked.

He went around the city freely, walking and in taxis. "Everything had shut down. But people were out in the streets, standing on the doorsteps, talking, kids were playing football. Small shops opened."

On the third day he went out to see the damage to the Foreign Ministry and cabinet office where the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Tariq Aziz, has his office. Both buildings were "completely demolished," Michael said.

He visited the Adhamiya quarter were he saw a house which had been totally destroyed and two killed. "It is completely a residential area. There was no obvious target nearby."

On the 24th, the day of the great sandstorm, he went in a press bus to see a crater in another residential area. "We walked down a lane late at night when bombs were still falling. We could hardly see ahead because of the smoke and sand. A bomb had fallen in between eight houses and seriously damaged them but nobody had been killed."

He continued: "On the sixth day of the bombing we were taken to a hospital to see civilians who were injured or lost relatives when their homes were bombed. I met one man who had just got married eight days before and his wife was killed at a farmhouse on the outskirts of the city where a number of families had gone for safety.

"The next morning we went to the farmhouse. On the way we passed a lot of bomb damage. Tribal people had set up roadblocks and were carrying guns. At the poor farming community neighbours showed us the destroyed house. The whole top floor had collapsed, food rations and kerosene lamps were still inside the ground floor rooms. There was a freezer filled with meat but no electricity. The cow had also been killed. The neighbours were friendly, eager to tell us what had happened. They had heard planes overhead before the explosions. They invited us for dinner but it was growing dark and we did not stay.

"We were taken to the al-Kindi and Yarmuk hospitals. At the Yarmuk hospital I met a doctor who had finished in 1984 at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. The hospitals had been cleared of all patients but war wounded. I saw children with horrific wounds, people, children who had lost their loved ones but did not know. The doctor [whose name Michael had written in his confiscated notebook] was a first world doctor working in a third world hospital. They have enough medicines now, but if the war gets more intense, and the level of casualties increase, they will need to get more supplies."

On his last tour of the city, Michael was taken to see three of the four telephone exchanges which were bombed at the end of last week. At the main exchange, a landmark built by Iraq's most famous architect, the bomb took out the core, leaving the outer structure.

"We could only see that the dishes at the top had been blackened and there was a small hole at the bottom." The exchanges at Mansur and Karada "were completely incinerated."

In spite of the rain of bombs on the city, Michael never felt threatened by the people he met in spite of his short blonde hair cut which made him look, his friends said, like an American Marine.

"The Iraqis think Ireland is with them because we also suffered under the British," he said.

In spite of all he saw, Michael longs to return to Baghdad where he had based himself since last October.