torresdd

A few hours earlier, Colonel Fredrick Rudesheim,
who heads the 3rd Combat Brigades that was involved
in Sunday's bloody clashes, told reporters his troops
had killed 46 and captured another 11.

"Are you asking me to produce (them)?"

he asked,

when asked by reporters about the absence of
any militants' bodies at Samarra's single hospital
or on the city's streets.
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8040635%255E2,00.html
No bodies found after Iraq gunfight
From correspondents in Samarra
December 2, 2003

THE US military has said it believes 54 insurgents
were killed in intense exchanges in the northern
Iraqi town of Samarra on Sunday but commanders
admitted they had no bodies.

Ambush: US troops on the lookout
The only corpses at the city's hospital were those
of ordinary civilians, including two elderly Iranian
pilgrims and a child.

US Brigadier General Mark Kimmit told a Baghdad
press conference 54 militants were killed, 22 wounded
and one arrested.

Challenged about what had happened to the bodies,
Gen Kimmitt said:

"I would suspect that the enemy would have carried
them away and brought them back to where their initial
base was."

Asked about reports from senior police and hospital
officials in the town of eight civilians killed and dozens
more wounded, the US general insisted:

"We have no such reports whether
from medical authorities or police.

A few hours earlier, Colonel Fredrick Rudesheim,
who heads the 3rd Combat Brigades that was involved
in Sunday's bloody clashes, told reporters his troops
had killed 46 and captured another 11.

"Are you asking me to produce (them)?"

he asked,

when asked by reporters about the absence of
any militants' bodies at Samarra's single hospital
or on the city's streets.

"This is a good question and I think
perhaps if you can interview the Fedayeen
(a disbanded militia of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime)
or whoever attacked us, you might get a better answer."

Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Gonsalves,
who commands the 166th Armoured Battalion in Samarra,
also said his troops were not in possession of the bodies.

The death toll, he said, was

"based on the reports we got from the ground".

Lieutenant Joseph Marcee,
who took part in Sunday's combat,
said he saw several of the attackers
lying dead on the ground.

"There was no time to pick up the bodies.

We were receiving fire from other locations," he said.

Sergeant Nicholas Mullen,
who fired rounds from an Abrams tank on Sunday,
offered yet another explanation for the army's
inability to locate the corpses.

"We don't stick around," he said.

The mystery, which borders on solving a
mathematics equation, further deepened
with Col Gonsalves' report.

According to him, a total of 60 militants,
divided into two groups, attacked two convoys
escorting new Iraqi currency to banks in the city.

Another four assailants in a BMW
attacked a separate engineering convoy.

If the US troops killed 46 and captured 11 of them,
only three of the survivors would have been left to
pick up the corpses.

On Kimmit's figures the calculus becomes even hazier
- with 54 killed, 22 wounded and one captured,
3 militants remain unaccounted for, although both
commanders did say the cash convoys also came
under attack on their way in and out of the city.

As to how the troops came up with their casualty figures,
Rudesheim said it was by counting their weapons.

"We don't indiscriminately engage people,
only those who engage us with AK 47s and RPGs.

That's how we determine the number of people we
are engaging and, after talking with each soldier,
we can tell just how many people are returning
fire at us."

Residents in Samarra said they had not
seen any of the militants' bodies, 46 or 54.

The head of the local hospital, Abed Tawfiq,
reported eight dead civilians but no insurgents.

Ambulance driver Abdelmoneim Mohammed
said he had not ferried any combatants wounded
or killed and wearing the black Fedayeen outfit
which US soldiers said their assailants wore.

"If I had seen bodies, I would have picked them up.

It's not like the Americans would have done it.

"If the death toll had reached that announced by
the Americans, the atmosphere in Samarra would
be quite different."

Salaheddin Mawlud, a colonel in the former Iraqi army,
who now heads Samarra city council's complaints office,
said the American toll does not work.

"If there had been so many dead, we would have
seen people rushing to the hospital, the police station
or here, and it just didn't happen."

Abdelrizek Jadwa, who owns a grocery 50m from
the scene of one of the attacks, said he did not have
the shadow of a doubt.

"After the firing, I went out of my shop.

There were no wounded, no killed on the streets.

Where could they have disappeared?"

Agence France-Presse