Iraqi Mourners Swear They’ll Avenge Deaths

Iraqi mourners marched alongside flag-covered coffins today, firing automatic rifles into the air and crying out for revenge for the U.S. air strike that Iraq said killed hundreds in a shelter.

“By God we swear, we will make them pay their blood for this crime!” members of the crowd of 5,000 yelled. “The death of our women and children will not go unavenged!”

Scores more bodies were pulled from the building that was blasted apart early Wednesday by U.S. warplanes, and a Cabinet minister depicted President Bush as a war criminal comparable to Adolf Hitler--a comparison Bush himself has used when speaking of Saddam Hussein.

The death toll from Wednesday’s raid remained uncertain, in part because rescuers had not yet reached all areas of the shattered above-and-below-ground shelter.

The Information Ministry said at least 400 people had been killed. Civil defense officials estimated the toll at more than 500, mostly women and children. In either case, it was the bloodiest attack yet reported in the month-old Persian Gulf War.

Information Minister Latif Jassim angrily rejected U.S. assertions that the building was a military command bunker rather than a civilian air raid shelter.

“We are told that Hitler burned the Jews,” Jassim told reporters. “Now Bush is burning Iraqi children.”

Jassim also denounced U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar as “a filthy and criminal conspirator.”

“By maintaining silence toward the crimes of the Americans and their allies, he has in fact provided cover for the United States,” Jassim said. “From both the moral and legal standpoints, he is no longer suitable for the position he holds.”

At least 20 people killed in the raid were buried today, and many more bodies were retrieved from the wreckage in Baghdad’s al-Amerieh district by rescue teams supported by bulldozers and cranes.

Officials fear many corpses will never be identified, mainly because they were so badly mutilated or because entire families died. A military communique issued during the afternoon said 64 bodies had been positively identified.

Reporters escorted to the site by Information Ministry officials counted at least 40 corpses, many decapitated or missing limbs.

A few hundred yards away, mourners marched to the neighborhood cemetery to bury the dead.

Other private funerals were held elsewhere in the capital. Officials said most of the bodies retrieved Wednesday were still in hospital morgues.

Rescue operations had stopped after sundown Wednesday when air raids on Baghdad resumed.