Iraqi-Americans Fear for Loved Ones in Homeland : Reaction: Group calls for cease-fire to allow Red Cross to determine need for humanitarian aid.

In an attempt to speak out on behalf of Iraqi civilians under fire in the Gulf War, a diverse coalition of Iraqi-Americans on Sunday made an emotional public appeal for a one-day cease-fire to allow the International Red Cross to assess civilian casualties in their homeland.

Americans have been able to support the war because they have yet to see a single Iraqi civilian casualty on television, said Raad Omar of Glendale, an Iraqi-born computer expert who is a U.S. citizen.

“We have seen injuries from a dozen Scud missiles in Israel. Imagine how many injuries there must be from 7,000 bombs falling in Iraq. Even if they have an 80% success rate, as the generals say, we must ask: Where did the other 20% of the bombs fall?”

The still-nameless coalition, which includes a wide range of Iraqi-Americans, including U.S. citizens who voted for President Bush and Iraqi-born Muslims who once supported Saddam Hussein, says they hope to put politics aside and spark a nationwide movement to pressure both leaders to stop the war for 24 hours to determine the need for humanitarian assistance.

“Iraqis do not deserve this suffering,” said an Iraqi-American from Orange County, who asked that his name not be used. “We never elected Saddam Hussein. We never had an election. Iraq is not a democracy. But instead of sympathizing with the Iraqi people for having to live under Saddam, you are bombing them. They are not your enemies.”

The emotional meeting, held at a Los Angeles-area mosque whose leader asked not be identified for fear of anti-Iraqi vandalism, brought together a variety of Iraqi-American residents from Southern California.

There are believed to be about 150,000 Iraqi-Americans in the United States, perhaps a third living in California. Most are professionals--doctors, businessmen, professors, and others--who left Iraq during the 1970s as political and economic repression intensified under Hussein’s rule. Because they do not congregate in specific neighborhoods and come from diverse political and religious backgrounds, many had never met before Sunday.

What they had in common was fear for family members in Iraq.

“All my family, all my friends and my whole future is in Baghdad,” said Zainab Rasheed, a 21-year-old college student who was here on vacation when war erupted. “When I talked to my mother on the telephone for the last time, she was telling me about her will. ‘Do this,’ she said, ‘And this, and remember to be a good girl and that we love you.’ ”

Rasheed, who was in tears as she spoke, said her home is close to the military airport in Baghdad. In the same conversation, she said, her 17-year-old brother told her that he expected to be drafted into Hussein’s army shortly.

“I am just 21 years old,” she said. “And I have spent almost my whole life with wars. I’ve seen children die in front of my eyes. And now am I supposed to lose my whole family in war? Don’t American people understand that we are human too? That Iraqis have feelings?”

Because of military censorship by Iraq and the United States, these Iraqi-Americans complained, they have little information about the course of the war in Iraq, and are left to imagine their worst fears. Because Baghdad is densely populated--a city of more than 4 million in an area one described as the size of Glendale--they speculated that it would be impossible to avoid civilian casualties even under the most accurate bombing campaigns.

One young Kurdish woman said the last time she spoke with her mother in the northern city of Mosul, her mother told her that if war broke out, she would go to a 400-year-old church for safety. On Sunday, she said, she heard an unconfirmed report on the radio that the church had been bombed by American planes based in Turkey.

“I lost half my family in the Iran-Iraq war when Saddam dropped chemical bombs on the Kurds,” said a Huntington Beach dentist, a U.S. citizen who also asked that her name not be used. “Now I am scared that I am going to lose the other half--and my own country will be responsible.”

Another Iraqi woman said she had talked Sunday with an uncle in Rome who managed to escape Baghdad the day before. The uncle told her that medicine and food were running out in shelters where many civilians were hiding, and that people were drinking from pools of water in the street because water mains had been broken.

Akin Krikorian, an Iraqi-born accountant, said tearfully: “Just let us find out how many of our children are dead and how many are alive. That’s all. We beg of our leaders that they just let the Red Cross in to see what Iraq looks like.”

So far, neither Iraq nor the United States has shown any interest in a cease-fire. Before war broke out, U.S. military commanders said they had built into their battle plan a “strategic pause” that would follow an initial phase of intensive bombardment to give Iraq one last chance to withdraw from Kuwait. Timing of that “pause” was described as highly classified.

“The largest hospital in Baghdad is right across the street from the Ministry of Defense, which was one of the first targets of the bombing,” said an Iraqi-American doctor who is now a U.S. citizen and asked that his name not be used. “I used to teach there. Can you imagine what would happen to a hospital with thousands of people in it when a bomb went off across the street? Even if there wasn’t a direct hit? How do you operate a hospital when water and electricity are said to be cut off?”

“Even before the war, there was a lack of medicine because of economic sanctions,” said Frank Abrahamian, a printer from Glendale. “What do you think is happening now?”