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Emaciated Iraqi orphans found

But an Iraqi official redirects blame on the U.S. rescuers.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 21, 2007

BAGHDAD - U.S. and Iraqi soldiers found 24 severely malnourished children in a Baghdad orphanage - some tied to their beds and too weak to stand, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

Photographs showed emaciated children lying on the floor, some of them tied to cribs; a U.S. soldier holding a bottle of water for one of the boys to drink; and American medics examining the children.

But an Iraqi Cabinet minister whose department is investigating the case criticized publicity surrounding the boys and said news reports were inaccurate.

"We totally reject the tricks they used to manipulate and distort facts and show the Americans as the humanitarian party. That could not be further from the truth, " said Labor and Social Affairs Minister Mahmoud Mohammed al-Radhi.

The minister said the institution in which the boys were housed had saved them from a certain death on the streets of Baghdad. All the boys, he said, were severely handicapped and abandoned by their families. He accused the Americans of staging a photograph of the children.

The story of the orphanage was first reported this week by CBS News, which broadcast pictures of the boys.

The U.S. military said the boys were between the ages of 3 and 15. It said many of the youngsters were found naked in a dark room with no windows. Supplies of food and clothing were found in a nearby storeroom.

Three women, who claimed to be caretakers, and two men, the orphanage director and a guard, were in the building when the soldiers arrived June 10, according to the military statement.

Adel Muhsin, the Iraqi Health Ministry's inspector general, said arrest warrants were issued for three employees of the orphanage who have gone into hiding. He did not identify the three or say what jobs they held at the facility.

An investigation into the case ordered by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was under way in tandem with a separate one by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Muhsin said.

"I was shocked to see the images, " Mushin said. "We never expected that the people entrusted to take care of them would be so mean."

The U.S. soldiers were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, N.C., said Maj. Tom Earnhardt, division spokesman. The soldiers were working under the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division in Baghdad, he said.

"This is a story of partnership, courageous action and compassion overcoming deplorable negligence, " said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, Multi-National Division-Baghdad deputy commanding general.

Iraqi children are thought to have suffered most in the violence that has torn Iraq for more than four years.

The U.N. Children's Fund said last month that Iraq's children are caught in a rapidly worsening tragedy and that half the estimated 4-million Iraqis who have fled their homes since the war began in 2003 are children.

"Violence is creating widows and orphans on a daily basis, many of whom are left to struggle for survival, " it said. "Iraq's children, already casualties of a quarter of a century of conflict and deprivation, are being caught up in a rapidly worsening humanitarian tragedy."

Fast Facts:

Iraq developments

U.S. offensive: U.S. forces and allied militants intensified operations Wednesday in Baghdad and on all four points of the compass around the capital in Operation Phantom Thunder. In the largest offensive, intense gunbattles were reported in Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province, as U.S. and Iraqi forces sought to clear the city of al-Qaida fighters. The latest military report on the Diyala offensive said U.S.-led forces had killed 41 insurgents, discovered five weapons caches and destroyed 25 bombs and five booby-trapped houses.

Violence: Suspected Shiite militia members bombed three Sunni houses of worship in what may presage a war of the mosques. The bombings in Haswa and Iskandariyah and near Hillah caused heavy damage but no casualties. Nationwide, police and morgue officials said 60 people died in sectarian-related violence, and 32 of the bodies were found in Baghdad.

Danger in Green Zone: Rear Adm. Mark Fox, a U.S. military spokesman, acknowledged "an increasing pattern of attacks" against Baghdad's Green Zone without providing details. The Green Zone, a former safe haven, houses the U.S. and British embassies as well as Iraqi government buildings. A U.N. report this month said mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone totaled 17 in March, 30 in April, and 39 by May 22. At least 26 people had been killed since Feb. 19 in the attacks, the report said.

Times wires

[Last modified June 21, 2007, 00:36:46]