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bomber
Feb 2, 2005 7:46:05 GMT -5
Post by Jackie on Feb 2, 2005 7:46:05 GMT -5
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bomber
Feb 2, 2005 7:47:16 GMT -5
Post by Jackie on Feb 2, 2005 7:47:16 GMT -5
Here is the text
Minister: Suicide bomber a handicapped child Iraq police say attacker seemed to have Down SyndromeThe Associated Press Updated: 3:53 p.m. ET Jan. 31, 2005BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq’s interior minister said Monday that insurgents used a handicapped child as one of the suicide bombers who launched attacks on election day.
advertisement Falah al-Naqib told reporters in Baghdad that 38 attacks were carried out on polling stations in Iraq on Sunday and that one of the suicide bombings was carried out by a disabled child.
“A handicapped child was used to carry out a suicide attack on a polling site,” al-Naqib said. “This is an indication of what horrific actions they are carrying out.”
He gave no other details about the attack, but police at the scene of one the Baghdad blasts said the bomber appeared to have Down Syndrome.
Al-Naqib praised an Iraqi citizen who was killed while blocking one suicide bomber from reaching a crowd of people outside at polling station.
Iraq’s prime minister, Ayad Allawi, said the seven men who carried out suicide attacks near polling stations Sunday were foreigners. In all, insurgent attacks and suicide bombers left at least 44 people dead Sunday.
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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bomber
Feb 2, 2005 9:01:20 GMT -5
Post by shellk on Feb 2, 2005 9:01:20 GMT -5
That in itself just really leaves me speechless, and thankful to be where I am..To use a child, and one who is disabled. I mean really this shows how low people out there really are..This is just aweful Michele
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bomber
Feb 2, 2005 9:11:05 GMT -5
Post by Jackie on Feb 2, 2005 9:11:05 GMT -5
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bomber
Feb 2, 2005 11:25:07 GMT -5
Post by wrblack on Feb 2, 2005 11:25:07 GMT -5
And for those, like me, who don't want to subscribe to The Age to see that article, here's the text: Down syndrome youth used as suicide bomber By Paul McGeough, Baghdad February 2, 2005
Amar was 19, but he had the mind of a four-year-old. This handicap didn't stop the insurgency's hard men as they strapped explosives to his chest and guided him to a voting centre in suburban Al-Askan. And before yesterday's sunrise in Baghdad, his grieving parents loaded his broken remains on the roof of a taxi to lead a sorrowful procession to the holy city of Najaf. There, they gave him a ceremonial wash, shrouded him in white cotton and buried him next to the shrine of Imam Ali, the founder of their Shiite creed.
On Sunday we witnessed an act of collective courage by an estimated 8 million Iraqis as they faced down terrorist threats of death and mayhem to vote in Iraq's first multi-party election in half a century.
But the election day story of Amar is from the other side of human behaviour - in a region where too many have knowingly volunteered for an explosive death in the name of their god. He was chosen because he didn't know.
He had Down syndrome or, as the Iraqis say, he's a mongoli, and when his parents, Ahmed, 42, and Fatima, 40, went to vote with their two daughters Amar was left in the family home.
They presume that in their absence he set out to fill his day as he always did - wandering the streets of the neighbourhood until, usually, a friend or neighbour would bring him home around dusk.
Al-Askan is a mixed and dangerous suburb. Yesterday the Iraqi police allowed The Age to advance only a few blocks into the area before ordering us out. The area around the family's home was the centre of a running gunfight between Shiites of the Al-Bahadel tribe and Sunnis of the Al-Ghedi tribe.
But one of Amar's cousins, a 29-year-old teacher who asked not to be named, retreated to a distracted state in which Iraqis often discuss death to tell their story as best they can. "They must have kidnapped him," he said. "He was like a baby. He had nothing to do with the resistance and there was nothing in the house for him to make a bomb. He was Shiite. Why bomb his own people?
"He was mindless, but he was mostly happy, laughing and playing with the children in the street. Now, his father is inconsolable; his mother cries all the time," the teacher said.
After voting at 7.30am, Amar's parents joined their extended family for a celebration that became a lunch of chicken and rice, soup and orange juice, at the home of a relative.
The sound of the explosion interrupted the party. But, the cousin said, it was assumed to be a mortar shell, a follow-up to the barrage across the city in the first hours of voting.
"Everyone was very happy and excited, but news came that a mongoli had been a bomber. Ahmed and Fatima became distressed and they raced home. They got neighbours to search and one of them identified Amar's head where it lay on the pavement and his body was broken into pieces.
"I have heard of them using dead people and donkeys and dogs to hide their bombs, but how could they do this to a boy like Amar?"
Apparently, Amar triggered the bomb before he got to the intended target. It exploded while he was crossing open ground.
Amar's father served in Saddam's army, but now he sells cigarettes in a street market in Al-Askan, an area of the city that also displayed bravery in the casting of votes on Sunday.
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bomber
Feb 2, 2005 15:55:26 GMT -5
Post by Chester on Feb 2, 2005 15:55:26 GMT -5
I'm speechless and heartbroken. What a sad society.
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bomber
Feb 3, 2005 9:38:54 GMT -5
Post by Cbean on Feb 3, 2005 9:38:54 GMT -5
May God bless our soldiers who are there trying to salvage this country and the innocent victims like this young man. Stories like this one truly help us to understand why we're there. Imagine if the people who did this get control what they could do!
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bomber
Feb 4, 2005 12:15:24 GMT -5
Post by Kristen on Feb 4, 2005 12:15:24 GMT -5
Am I the only one outraged at the descriptioin of how his family treated him? What the terrorists did was of course absolutely beyond reproach, but look at how his family regarded him! What a sad, sad story all around!
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bomber
Feb 4, 2005 12:39:53 GMT -5
Post by Jessie on Feb 4, 2005 12:39:53 GMT -5
Kristen,
Yes, my initial thought was the same thing - how can they just allow him to wander the streets all day?? That makes me very sad for him - and all other people with disabilities that are cared for in this regard - thank God the small town did take care of him before this tragic day.
His parents probably had no resources to learn how to care for him, there are probably no special education facilities for him to attend, the reasons are probably numerous as to why he as cared for in this way.
Jessie
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bomber
Feb 4, 2005 12:44:41 GMT -5
Post by Kristen on Feb 4, 2005 12:44:41 GMT -5
Jessie - I thought of htat, but look at where they were when the bombing happened - at a relative's celebrating withou thim along! There is no reason he shouldn't be with them. It isn't like no one was available to watch him because they are at work or whatnot.
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bomber
Feb 4, 2005 18:48:37 GMT -5
Post by Chester on Feb 4, 2005 18:48:37 GMT -5
You also have to remember that the culture and where they are societially is not the same as in the USA. It wasn't all that long ago, here in America that Dr's were saying that newborn babies born with Down Syndrome didn't hold any future and belonged in an assylum.
Of course, I wondered why he was home alone, and then the next second I was surprised that he was ALLOWED to live at home with his family and not institutionalized or worse.
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bomber
Feb 4, 2005 21:28:38 GMT -5
Post by christie on Feb 4, 2005 21:28:38 GMT -5
OMG what a sick sick world. This entire story literally makes me sick
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bomber
Feb 5, 2005 5:03:47 GMT -5
Post by thistledownnz on Feb 5, 2005 5:03:47 GMT -5
This shocked me too, but also the attitude of his parents, (wasnt one quote that he was "mindless"..it would be interesting (or perhaps just down right depressing)to see their early intervention programmes and later schooling of special needs kids.
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bomber
Feb 5, 2005 14:14:52 GMT -5
Post by rickismom on Feb 5, 2005 14:14:52 GMT -5
I had also noticed the families why of treating him--- but they probably didn't realize that much else was possible. So SAD. They DID seem upset afterwards--- and it is such a sick culture that uses kids as suicide bombers. Even though this happens often here in Israel, I never get used to the meanness of people who do such things. So sick and so sad. What a pitty.
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bomber
Feb 5, 2005 23:39:12 GMT -5
Post by Claire on Feb 5, 2005 23:39:12 GMT -5
What is this world coming too. Poor boy and all of the ones who are used for their tactics.
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