A ‘Real War’ : Children Cower in Baghdad Air Raid Shelters, ‘Sobbing and Crying’

Screaming children in Baghdad’s bomb shelters cower in terror from the thunder of air raids and the indistinguishable roar of antiaircraft fire, refugees from the Persian Gulf War said today.

“It makes the children jump out of their skins,” Mohammed Abdul-Kader, a journalist for the Palestinian news agency Wafa, said after reaching Jordan.

“The main worry for families is the children. They were terrified and screaming and crying as soon as they heard the planes. In my shelter they were sobbing and crying all the time,” he told reporters at this border post.

The United States and its allies launched the Persian Gulf War last Thursday with intensive air raids on what the coalition says are military and strategic targets in Iraq and Kuwait.

Refugees reaching this litter-strewn crossing with Iraq said the bombing of Baghdad, now turned into a ghost town, was being conducted around the clock but still meeting fierce antiaircraft fire.

None had reliable details of casualties or civilian buildings hit.

“The bombing is beyond imagination. It goes on all the time, and people can’t distinguish the explosion of bombs from antiaircraft fire. Incoming and outgoing sounds mingle, and you can’t tell one from the other,” Abdul-Kader, 30, said.

“I could see fires burning miles from where we were,” said Bruce Wolcott, an American anti-war campaigner who left Baghdad on Monday.

“Everybody I talked to in Iraq is worried and concerned about their families and especially their food and water. They are also worried about Israel attacking,” Wolcott said.

Most shops in central Baghdad remained closed and, although a few had opened in some neighborhoods, they were running short of food, fuel, water and medicine, he said.

Children in shelters were eating canned food and biscuits for lack of cooking facilities, said Abdul-Kader.

He and other travelers said air strikes had hit an oil refinery at Dora just outside Baghdad.

Reuters photographer Patrick de Noirmont, who reached Amman late Sunday night, said a refinery southwest of Baghdad was heavily bombed last Saturday.

Lakh Birsingh, one of 50 Indian construction workers who fled the Iraqi capital by bus, said of the refinery raid: “We saw the fire rising from the refinery, orange glows coming out. It raged for one hour before we heard the fire engines coming to put it out.”

Abdul-Kader and many of the Indians said Iraqi paramilitary Popular Army volunteers would seal off bombed areas after raids, making it impossible to assess damage or casualties.

“We’ve seen the fighting in the Iran-Iraq War, and we’ve seen war between India and Pakistan, but this time it’s different,” said Sharma Picisarna, an Indian laborer.

“It is scary. This is real war.”