Dresden bombing 70 years on: A survivor recalls the horror he witnessed in the German city

British rifleman Victor Gregg was being held as a PoW by the Germans in Dresden when the Allies bombed the city in 1945. He witnessed unimaginable carnage that brought him decades of mental turmoil. This is his eyewitness account of the firestorm he left behind

On 13 February 1945, Victor Gregg was a 25-year-old British rifleman being held by the Germans in the beautiful city of Dresden. Having been captured in the Battle of Arnhem, he had twice tried to escape his POW camp, for which his punishment was to work in a soap factory, and this required him to walk 10 miles a day through thick snow (he was given a pair of wooden clogs). Unrepentant, he burnt down the soap factory, was sentenced to death and sent to Dresden for execution. There, he was held in an ad hoc 'prison', along with hundreds of other condemned men.

Like the guards and townspeople, Gregg did not believe the city would be bombed – there was a widespread understanding that the Allies would preserve its cultural heritage, just as the Germans had refrained from attacking Oxford. But, as he relates here, it was an unfounded assumption. Gregg was to witness unimaginable carnage that brought him decades of mental turmoil. Although a patriot, and by no means a pacifist, 70 years after the event he still believes that those who ordered the three-day bombing of Dresden could be guilty of a war crime, because they knew the devastation that would be wreaked on the civilian population.

After the raid, he eventually walked to the advancing Russian lines. This is his eyewitness account of the firestorm he left behind.

At about 10.30pm, the air-raid sirens started wailing, and because this happened every night no notice was taken. But after a short period of silence, a wave of pathfinders started to drop target flares. We saw them through a glass cupola: filling the sky with blinding light, they floated to Earth, dripping burning phosphorus on to the streets and houses.

As if in slow motion, the inmates of the prison began to realise they were trapped. (The guards had locked the doors and scarpered.) Then, the throb of hundreds of heavy bombers began to fill the air, getting nearer and louder by the second. The prisoners were banging on the doors and crying to be let out. I crouched beside a wall, as low as I could.

The flares were still falling when the initial stream flew over, dropping thousands of incendiaries along with the first bombs. A string would hit the ground in succession – like a drum roll – and the sky changed from a bright white to a dull red that danced before dying.

As the never-ending stream passed over, about four incendiaries burst through our glass roof, breaking it into fragments and shredding the luckless men beneath. The phosphorus clung to the bodies of the injured, turning them into human torches, but it was impossible to extinguish the flames and their screaming was added to the other cries. I was still untouched – but not for long...

 Suddenly, a "blockbuster" dropped outside our building, blowing in the whole wall. (These thin-walled, massive missiles could demolish whole blocks with one explosion, hence the name.) I was thrown nearly 50ft and covered in brickwork and rubble. When I came to, I realised the smoke and fumes from the building's burning shell were now being swept away by a gradually rising wind. Freeing myself, I stumbled over the debris and out of the building, which was slowly collapsing. There, I found a few other survivors, and the first thing that hit me was the heat. Wherever I turned, I was confronted with flames, smoke and dust – and all the time blocks of debris falling from the sky.

There were about a dozen in our group who were able to walk or stagger, and other small groups were moving between the heaps of rubble and the flames which, without warning, shot out of gaps in the walls. The noise of the planes died down and people started to appear from the few houses still intact. Survivors were clawing their way through mounds of rubble that an hour before had been their homes. We stumbled along the remains of a wide avenue, flanked by fires and mountains of red-hot wreckage. (I was saved by my wooden soles, which were so thick that I could walk over the glowing cinders.) Finally we found ourselves in open fields, next to a railway line.

Reaching safety, we saw another group approaching: about two dozen firemen, with a cart full of picks, shovels, buckets, rope coils and cans of drinking water. The leader immediately formed us all up, selected those who seemed capable and began to march us off, leaving the injured to fend for themselves.

Not everyone wanted to be offered as fuel to the furnace less than 500 yards away. But when three men hesitated, our leader turned round, drew his pistol and shot two at point-blank range. (The third started running as fast as he could to catch up.) So there we were: about 30 of us, led by a German whose answer to problems was to shoot now and ask questions later.

At first, we found people who had been caught out in the open and were still alive. By fixing bits of wood to our picks and shovels, we constructed stretchers and bore them away. But after about two hours, we headed back to the railway, where we discovered reinforcements and a food wagon had somehow been shunted in from God knows where. Then the sirens started their terrible wailing again and the people gathered in small bunches, as if to shield each other from the onslaught.

The planes were thousands of feet up, but you could see their outlines reflected in the glow. And as their bombs fell, we realised this raid was nothing like the first. The new bombs were so big that you could see them in the sky. Even the incendiaries were different – not metre-long sticks, but four-ton objects that exploded on the ground, incinerating anything within a radius of 200ft – and raining down with these came more blockbusters, 10-tonners this time.

Volunteers help to clear the bomb damage debris (Getty)

Only 500 yards of open land separated us from the heart of the first raid. We could feel the terrible heat, our bodies shook as the ground vibrated. And as if this was not enough, another terror was making its presence felt: not really what you would call a wind; rather, the air being drawn in to feed the inferno was like a solid object, so great was its force.

The second raid had been in progress for about 15 minutes when, further down the line, the ground erupted in huge clouds of smoke and flame, and after the blasts came the enormous pull as air rushed into the vacuum. But our leader seemed keen to take us back into the furnace once these bombers departed.

This they did some 30 minutes later. And though there were still some stragglers above, now it was the action on the ground that mattered. Everything was in flames, even the roads, which were burning rivers of bubbling and hissing tar. Huge fragments of material flew through the air, sucked into the vortex. We could see people being torn from whatever they were hanging on to and drawn into the ever-deepening red glow less than 200 yards away.

A small group tried to reach us by crossing what had once been a road, only to get themselves stuck in a bubbling mass of molten tar. One by one, they sank to the ground through sheer exhaustion and then died in a pyre of smoke and flame. People of all shapes, sizes and ages were slowly sucked into the vortex, then suddenly whisked into the pillars of smoke and fire, their hair and clothing alight.

And, as if the Devil himself had decided their torments were insufficient, above the wind's howl and the inferno's roar came the interminable, agonised screams of the victims being roasted alive. What saved us was being on open ground with oxygen to breathe and, since the fires were getting worse, we abandoned any idea of approaching the city centre for now. It was a sea of flame rising into a sky of smoke. And with the air so hot that it was painful to inhale, we retreated to an island of safety. At dawn, we saw new gangs had arrived to fill up the craters and re-lay the track, and by mid-morning a small line of wagons was shunted alongside us. You had to hand it to the Krauts: the first thing they thought of was their bellies, and in the centre was a kitchen wagon, complete with hot soup, black bread and a 40-gallon drum of their ersatz coffee.

After eating, about 40 of us trudged into the smouldering embers edging the vast bonfire that still raged nearby. While other groups dug at the piles of masonry, clearing pathways, we were to uncover the cellars. But then the third raid started. Now it was the Americans, and the railway yards were their targets. This meant those who had escaped before were now getting the same treatment. And though the Americans dropped much less destructive bombs than the British, many more were killed.

When the raid ended, we continued with the cellars, prising them open with pickaxes and crowbars. Inside, we found the victims' bodies, usually shrivelled to half their normal size or worse. (Children under the age of three or four had simply melted.) But most looked like they had died peacefully, through lack of oxygen, losing consciousness in the process.

We dragged their remains into the open, where they were examined for identifying marks and then piled up to await cremation – and this turned out to be the easy bit. Even the hardest of us would flinch as we got nearer to the site of the raid's centre, where fierce fires still raged. But first we were fed and watered, and rested in a couple of old wagons that giant cranes had now lifted off the railway lines.

On the third day, everywhere I looked I could see men working in dozen-strong gangs and now, as we approached the city centre, the most terrible task began. Some of the corpses were so brittle that they crumbled into clouds of ash and dried flesh. Yet so methodical were the Germans that we were ordered to stuff any identifiable parts of these corpses into sacks. We wondered if the next day's work could be any worse. But when ordered to tackle a sector where there was a chance of finding survivors alive, the news brought fresh life to the gang.

We set off to a small square, where what had been grass was now a bed of ash 4in thick, and the first three shelters we uncovered were empty. But further examination of the third revealed a tunnel leading to another, blocked by a collapsed roof. When we broke through and found four women and two small girls alive, we cheered ourselves hoarse. We all felt like heroes – there were no enemies, no hatred, just a sense of fulfilment. But sadly, this was a solitary event, as we learned the next day.

Trudging through streets where sheets of flame were still shooting up 100ft, we came to the door of a communal shelter, which took all afternoon to prise open. With the first inch or so, there was a hissing sound and the surrounding dust was sucked into the opening. Then, as the gap widened, a terrible smell hit us – and slowly the horror inside became visible.

There were no real, complete bodies, only bones and scorched articles of clothing matted together on the floor and stuck together by a sort of jelly. There was no flesh visible, just a glutinous mass of solidified fat and bones, inches thick, on the floor. Now we understood what we might find in the city-centre shelters. But that was not to be my fate. That evening, I was told I was being returned to custody – so I drifted off, walked over the bridge and eastwards to join the Russians…

There's so much I have left out. Often, I get a shadow of recall, but nothing concrete remains. Everything was overwhelmed by the gruesome tasks we performed. It's the horror that remains burned in my memory. And like Dresden's fires, it seems impossible to extinguish.

This an edited extract from 'Dresden, a Survivor's Story', by Victor Gregg with Rick Stroud, published as an ebook by Bloomsbury

From: Victor Gregg 

12 February 2015 

Reference:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/dresden-bombing-70-years-on-a-survivor-recalls-the-horror-he-witnessed-in-the-german-city-10042

Dresden bombing 70 years on: A survivor recalls the horror he witnessed in the German city

From: Victor Gregg 

12 February 2015 

British rifleman Victor Gregg was being held as a PoW by the Germans in Dresden when the Allies bombed the city in 1945. He witnessed unimaginable carnage that brought him decades of mental turmoil. This is his eyewitness account of the firestorm he left behind

On 13 February 1945, Victor Gregg was a 25-year-old British rifleman being held by the Germans in the beautiful city of Dresden. Having been captured in the Battle of Arnhem, he had twice tried to escape his POW camp, for which his punishment was to work in a soap factory, and this required him to walk 10 miles a day through thick snow (he was given a pair of wooden clogs). Unrepentant, he burnt down the soap factory, was sentenced to death and sent to Dresden for execution. There, he was held in an ad hoc 'prison', along with hundreds of other condemned men.

Like the guards and townspeople, Gregg did not believe the city would be bombed – there was a widespread understanding that the Allies would preserve its cultural heritage, just as the Germans had refrained from attacking Oxford. But, as he relates here, it was an unfounded assumption. Gregg was to witness unimaginable carnage that brought him decades of mental turmoil. Although a patriot, and by no means a pacifist, 70 years after the event he still believes that those who ordered the three-day bombing of Dresden could be guilty of a war crime, because they knew the devastation that would be wreaked on the civilian population.

After the raid, he eventually walked to the advancing Russian lines. This is his eyewitness account of the firestorm he left behind.

At about 10.30pm, the air-raid sirens started wailing, and because this happened every night no notice was taken. But after a short period of silence, a wave of pathfinders started to drop target flares. We saw them through a glass cupola: filling the sky with blinding light, they floated to Earth, dripping burning phosphorus on to the streets and houses.

As if in slow motion, the inmates of the prison began to realise they were trapped. (The guards had locked the doors and scarpered.) Then, the throb of hundreds of heavy bombers began to fill the air, getting nearer and louder by the second. The prisoners were banging on the doors and crying to be let out. I crouched beside a wall, as low as I could.

The flares were still falling when the initial stream flew over, dropping thousands of incendiaries along with the first bombs. A string would hit the ground in succession – like a drum roll – and the sky changed from a bright white to a dull red that danced before dying.

As the never-ending stream passed over, about four incendiaries burst through our glass roof, breaking it into fragments and shredding the luckless men beneath. The phosphorus clung to the bodies of the injured, turning them into human torches, but it was impossible to extinguish the flames and their screaming was added to the other cries. I was still untouched – but not for long...

 Suddenly, a "blockbuster" dropped outside our building, blowing in the whole wall. (These thin-walled, massive missiles could demolish whole blocks with one explosion, hence the name.) I was thrown nearly 50ft and covered in brickwork and rubble. When I came to, I realised the smoke and fumes from the building's burning shell were now being swept away by a gradually rising wind. Freeing myself, I stumbled over the debris and out of the building, which was slowly collapsing. There, I found a few other survivors, and the first thing that hit me was the heat. Wherever I turned, I was confronted with flames, smoke and dust – and all the time blocks of debris falling from the sky.

There were about a dozen in our group who were able to walk or stagger, and other small groups were moving between the heaps of rubble and the flames which, without warning, shot out of gaps in the walls. The noise of the planes died down and people started to appear from the few houses still intact. Survivors were clawing their way through mounds of rubble that an hour before had been their homes. We stumbled along the remains of a wide avenue, flanked by fires and mountains of red-hot wreckage. (I was saved by my wooden soles, which were so thick that I could walk over the glowing cinders.) Finally we found ourselves in open fields, next to a railway line.

Reaching safety, we saw another group approaching: about two dozen firemen, with a cart full of picks, shovels, buckets, rope coils and cans of drinking water. The leader immediately formed us all up, selected those who seemed capable and began to march us off, leaving the injured to fend for themselves.

Not everyone wanted to be offered as fuel to the furnace less than 500 yards away. But when three men hesitated, our leader turned round, drew his pistol and shot two at point-blank range. (The third started running as fast as he could to catch up.) So there we were: about 30 of us, led by a German whose answer to problems was to shoot now and ask questions later.

At first, we found people who had been caught out in the open and were still alive. By fixing bits of wood to our picks and shovels, we constructed stretchers and bore them away. But after about two hours, we headed back to the railway, where we discovered reinforcements and a food wagon had somehow been shunted in from God knows where. Then the sirens started their terrible wailing again and the people gathered in small bunches, as if to shield each other from the onslaught.

The planes were thousands of feet up, but you could see their outlines reflected in the glow. And as their bombs fell, we realised this raid was nothing like the first. The new bombs were so big that you could see them in the sky. Even the incendiaries were different – not metre-long sticks, but four-ton objects that exploded on the ground, incinerating anything within a radius of 200ft – and raining down with these came more blockbusters, 10-tonners this time.

Volunteers help to clear the bomb damage debris (Getty)

Only 500 yards of open land separated us from the heart of the first raid. We could feel the terrible heat, our bodies shook as the ground vibrated. And as if this was not enough, another terror was making its presence felt: not really what you would call a wind; rather, the air being drawn in to feed the inferno was like a solid object, so great was its force.

The second raid had been in progress for about 15 minutes when, further down the line, the ground erupted in huge clouds of smoke and flame, and after the blasts came the enormous pull as air rushed into the vacuum. But our leader seemed keen to take us back into the furnace once these bombers departed.

This they did some 30 minutes later. And though there were still some stragglers above, now it was the action on the ground that mattered. Everything was in flames, even the roads, which were burning rivers of bubbling and hissing tar. Huge fragments of material flew through the air, sucked into the vortex. We could see people being torn from whatever they were hanging on to and drawn into the ever-deepening red glow less than 200 yards away.

A small group tried to reach us by crossing what had once been a road, only to get themselves stuck in a bubbling mass of molten tar. One by one, they sank to the ground through sheer exhaustion and then died in a pyre of smoke and flame. People of all shapes, sizes and ages were slowly sucked into the vortex, then suddenly whisked into the pillars of smoke and fire, their hair and clothing alight.

And, as if the Devil himself had decided their torments were insufficient, above the wind's howl and the inferno's roar came the interminable, agonised screams of the victims being roasted alive. What saved us was being on open ground with oxygen to breathe and, since the fires were getting worse, we abandoned any idea of approaching the city centre for now. It was a sea of flame rising into a sky of smoke. And with the air so hot that it was painful to inhale, we retreated to an island of safety. At dawn, we saw new gangs had arrived to fill up the craters and re-lay the track, and by mid-morning a small line of wagons was shunted alongside us. You had to hand it to the Krauts: the first thing they thought of was their bellies, and in the centre was a kitchen wagon, complete with hot soup, black bread and a 40-gallon drum of their ersatz coffee.

After eating, about 40 of us trudged into the smouldering embers edging the vast bonfire that still raged nearby. While other groups dug at the piles of masonry, clearing pathways, we were to uncover the cellars. But then the third raid started. Now it was the Americans, and the railway yards were their targets. This meant those who had escaped before were now getting the same treatment. And though the Americans dropped much less destructive bombs than the British, many more were killed.

When the raid ended, we continued with the cellars, prising them open with pickaxes and crowbars. Inside, we found the victims' bodies, usually shrivelled to half their normal size or worse. (Children under the age of three or four had simply melted.) But most looked like they had died peacefully, through lack of oxygen, losing consciousness in the process.

We dragged their remains into the open, where they were examined for identifying marks and then piled up to await cremation – and this turned out to be the easy bit. Even the hardest of us would flinch as we got nearer to the site of the raid's centre, where fierce fires still raged. But first we were fed and watered, and rested in a couple of old wagons that giant cranes had now lifted off the railway lines.

On the third day, everywhere I looked I could see men working in dozen-strong gangs and now, as we approached the city centre, the most terrible task began. Some of the corpses were so brittle that they crumbled into clouds of ash and dried flesh. Yet so methodical were the Germans that we were ordered to stuff any identifiable parts of these corpses into sacks. We wondered if the next day's work could be any worse. But when ordered to tackle a sector where there was a chance of finding survivors alive, the news brought fresh life to the gang.

We set off to a small square, where what had been grass was now a bed of ash 4in thick, and the first three shelters we uncovered were empty. But further examination of the third revealed a tunnel leading to another, blocked by a collapsed roof. When we broke through and found four women and two small girls alive, we cheered ourselves hoarse. We all felt like heroes – there were no enemies, no hatred, just a sense of fulfilment. But sadly, this was a solitary event, as we learned the next day.

Trudging through streets where sheets of flame were still shooting up 100ft, we came to the door of a communal shelter, which took all afternoon to prise open. With the first inch or so, there was a hissing sound and the surrounding dust was sucked into the opening. Then, as the gap widened, a terrible smell hit us – and slowly the horror inside became visible.

There were no real, complete bodies, only bones and scorched articles of clothing matted together on the floor and stuck together by a sort of jelly. There was no flesh visible, just a glutinous mass of solidified fat and bones, inches thick, on the floor. Now we understood what we might find in the city-centre shelters. But that was not to be my fate. That evening, I was told I was being returned to custody – so I drifted off, walked over the bridge and eastwards to join the Russians…

There's so much I have left out. Often, I get a shadow of recall, but nothing concrete remains. Everything was overwhelmed by the gruesome tasks we performed. It's the horror that remains burned in my memory. And like Dresden's fires, it seems impossible to extinguish.

This an edited extract from 'Dresden, a Survivor's Story', by Victor Gregg with Rick Stroud, published as an ebook by Bloomsbury

Reference:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/dresden-bombing-70-years-on-a-survivor-recalls-the-horror-he-witnessed-in-the-german-city-10042

The bombing and destruction in Raqqa, Syria is only comparable to the destruction of Dresde by the Allies near the end of the Second World War. 

D,A, 

Trying to describe the destruction in Raqqa, Syria, the Russian Ministry of Defense compared it with the bombing of Dresden during the Second World War. 

In fact, the allied bombing of Dresden was very destructive indeed. It was carried out by two waves of bombings of more than 500 airplanes each focusing in an area of 2 km2 (the center of Dresden) in little more than 4 hours. Not only were ALL buildings completely destroyed, but all the people in the underground shelters were completely burned. A prisoner of war who took part in the cleaning work expressed that in some shelters with hundreds of people there were no traces of people, only a gelatinous mass mixed with shoes and other belongings.

The comparison of Raqqa with Dresden gives us an idea of the degree of destruction experienced by this Syrian city which before the war was a thriving and picturesque city on the banks of the Euphrates River with 250,000 inhabitants.

"What the US-led coalition did to Syria’s Raqqa is comparable to the infamous Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945, the Russian Defense Ministry said, adding that the allies may be rushing to pour money into Raqqa to cover up the aftermath.

Raqqa, which has served as the Syrian stronghold of the terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) since January 2014, was seized by the US-backed group Syrian Democratic Forces earlier this week. Some 80 percent of residential buildings in the city are estimated to have been rendered uninhabitable during the fighting, which involved massive bombardment by the US-led coalition’s airstrikes and artillery shelling.

 “Raqqa is still smoldering after the bombardment by the international coalition, and senior officials in Washington, Paris and Berlina are already pouring out pledges to allocate tens of millions of dollars and euros for reconstruction,” Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Sunday.

He said the intention to help Raqqa residents was commendable, but Moscow could not but wonder why previously all its calls to deliver humanitarian aid to other parts of Syria had been ignored or rejected.

“We made a list of cities and villages most in need and we didn’t distinguish between ‘bad’ and ‘good’ Syrians. But the answer from Washington, Berlin, Paris and London has always been the same: we can’t, we won’t,” the general said.

The change of heart may indicate that the US-led coalition simply wants to get rid of the evidence of its “barbaric bombing” of Raqqa, which resulted in “thousands of civilians, which [the coalition] claimed to be liberating form ISIL, being buried under debris”.

“Raqqa’s fate calls to mind that of Dresden in 1945, leveled by the US-British bombings,” Konashenkov added, referring to the controversial campaign reaching a peak in February 1945, during which American and British bombers dropped over 3,900 tons of bombs on the Nazi-controlled German city, killing some 25,000 civilians and destroying much of its center. The military necessity for such an action was questioned by many people, while some, including British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, perceived its goal as terrorizing the German population.

The SDF began its siege of Raqqa in June, with the US-led coalition supporting it with airstrikes, artillery fire, intelligence and training. The hostilities caused an exodus of civilians from the city, with some 270,000 displaced persons currently living in refugee camps in the province. Some 1,800 to 1,900 civilians have been killed in the fighting, at least 1,300 of whom were killed by the coalition, according to an estimate by the Airwars monitoring group.

https://www.rt.com/news/407442-raqqa-dresden-barbaric-bombings/

Destroying the world

US bombing has been killing millions of people for 80 years.

During the Second World War the Allies threw  some 3.4 million tons of bombs on the Axis countries (Germany, Italy and Japan). At the same time Germany had made several intense aerial raids on the English cities, particularly London. It is estimated that about half of the bombs dumped in Germany and other cities dominated by the Axis powers were done by the US Air Force.

In Japan, in 1945, conventional bombing by the United States on Japanese territory reached 2 million tons. Several Japanese cities suffered much destruction (Tokyo and Yokohama, for example, were destroyed by 50%).

At the end of World War II the US dropped the only atomic bombs that were used in war situations, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with almost half a million dead and total destruction of these cities.

In the Korean War (1950-53) the United States dumped 4 million tons of bombs. The city of Pyongyang, the capital was destroyed by 70%.

In the Vietnam War (1955-1975) more than five million tons were thrown at the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese government (4 million in South Vietnam and 1 million in North Vietnam).

In the Cambodian War (1957-75) the United States dropped 500,000 tons of bombs against the Khmer Rouge movement and other revolutionary groups.

In Laos War (1963 to 1975) 2 million tons of bombs were thrown at Pathet Lao and Hochimin route (this makes Laos the country that suffered the largest bombardment per inhabitant in history).

In Afghanistan, the bombing began in 2002 and continues today. The novelty is that part of the bombings is made with drones and those who manage the drones do it from their confortable offices in the United States.

In 1991, 250,000 tons of bombs were dropped in Iraq. Since 2003, the United States have been continuously bombing Iraqi cities and targets to this day. Although the numbers are not available, it is known that in 2003 alone there were 41,000 aircraft sorties and 21,000 bombs were dropped.

In Libya and Somalia, elected targets were bombed during the last 25 years. In both Libya and Somalia, American aircraft made several thousand sort ies with tens of thousands of bombs against predefined targets.

In Syria, bombing began recently, but the US has been supporting rebel movements against the government of Damascus since 2011. For 3 years they are directly bombing Syrian territory and in recent months there has been an attack of 70 tomahawks missiles from one US ship in the Mediterranean Sea to a Syrian government air base.

The United States continues to bomb Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and threatens to re-bomb Korea (North)

The United States threw more bombs and created more destruction in the last 80 years than ALL armies throughout the history of mankind.

It seems their role is to destroy the world and kill as many people as possible. This mission, which we would almost dare call genocide, has become the main strategic objective of US international politics.

They don't care

Bombing is easy, whoever makes the decision to bomb doesn't know how many people were killed or who they were. The coalition (United States and allies) do not selectively bomb.  They just drop bombs. The decision makers are far from the dead and the blood.  Because they carry out hundreds of attacks they can make mistakes. 

A few hundred people may die. These errors can be merely defined as "collateral damage". 

This time it was the city of Daquq, south of Kirkuk, a funeral was hit and many people died or were hurt.  There wasn't any enemy target nearby.

But, the attacks continue. There are still many bombs to go.

Because they don't care.

D.A.

The news 

The Russian Ministry of Defense says that the US-led coalition is responsible for striking mourners in the Iraqi city of Daquq on Friday, killing dozens of civilians, including women and children.

The coalition jets apparently identified the mourning procession as Islamic State terrorists, said General Igor Konashenkov, spokesperson for the Russian Defense Ministry.

“Judging by the eyewitness accounts, the mourning procession was mistaken for terrorists by the coalition aviation. Dozens of Iraqi civilians died, including women and children,” Konashenkov said.

“Russian reconnaissance pinpointed two jets conducting airstrikes on Daquq, located 30 kilometers to the south of Kirkuk, where, according to our data, there are no ISIS fighters,” he added.

Konashenkov noted that such incidents bear the mark of war crimes.

“These deadly attacks on civilian areas, which have all the marks of war crimes, are becoming almost a daily routine for the international coalition.”

The spokesman also noted that civilians and civilian infrastructure are increasingly finding themselves in the crosshairs of the coalition bombardment. 

“Too often weddings, funerals, hospitals, police stations, and humanitarian convoys are being hit by the coalition warplanes,” Konashenkov said. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova also weighed in, slamming the coalition’s action.

“Yesterday the ‘human rights defenders’ again bombed a funeral ceremony, this time in the Iraqi Daquq where there are no terrorists.” Zakharova said in a Facebook post.

In a statement to RT, the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF), which is in charge of the international anti-ISIS operation in Iraq and Syria, said that it has no evidence that jets of the alliance carried out the Daquq strike.

“At this time, we cannot associate this incident with any Coalition strikes in the area,” the response says.

https://twitter.com/Khaqani_M/status/789514154923163648

The control of Persian Gulf petroleum resources

What it is at stake in Yemen

D.Anton

The Persian (Arabian) Gulf produces about half of the oil sold in the petroleum international markets.

The Strait of Hormuz, is the only exit point of these oil and gas exports. The daily flow is about 17-20 million bbl/d, 35% of all seaborne traded oil and almost 20% of oil traded worldwide.

More than 85% of these crude oil exports went to Asian markets (Japan, India, South Korea, and China). The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, even temporarily, could lead to serious economic consequences.

Although there are some pipelines that could bypass Hormuz they can only replace palrtially the Hormuz flow (the unused capacity of the Saudi Arabia and UAE pipelines is only 1 million bbl/day that could eventually be increased to 4 million bbl/day.

Still, in the near future most of the exported petroleum in the world will continue travelling through Hormuz.

The Hormuz strait is quite narrow. At its narrowest point it is 54 km wide. For this reason it has an enormous strategic importance.  

The Hormuz coastal countries are Iran, UAE and Oman. Potentially, Iran could easily block the strait. The likelihood of this blockade happening is extremely low but it still exists.

On the other hand, an important part of the petroleum exports going to Western Europe passes through the Red Sea and the Suez canal.

In order to get into the Red Sea ships must go through the strait of Bab el Mandeb. The Bab el Mandeb coastal countries are Yemen on its Asian side and Djibouti and Eritrea on the African coast.

Bab-el-Mandeb is a strategic link between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean sea. An estimated 3.5-4 million barrels of oil pass through the strait each day, which is 10% of all petroleum moved by tankers.

The width of the strait is about 30 km from Ras Menheli in Yemen to Ras Siyyan in Djibouti.

As in Hormuz, the Bab el Mandeb strait is vulnerable because of its narrowness, and eventually could be threatened from coastal countries actions, particularly from Yemen which has shown high political instability.

Presently the Yemen government is controlled by the Houthis, a shia nationalistic organization, which is closely related to shia Iran.

Therefore, Iran, with the Houthy alliance, might be, if necessary,  in a position to threaten both the Hormuz and Bab el Mandeb straits, and therefore threaten the circulation of most petroleum exports of the world.

Neither Saudi Arabia nor the United States or the United Kingdom would allow this situation to prosper, and as a result Saudi Arabia, a sunni muslim state (enemy of the shia Irán), has been bombing Yemeni cities and killing people for almost two years (with the help fo the U.S. and the U.K.).

As it can be seen, the war in Yemen is also a result of the struggle for control of the Middle East petroleum resources. It does not seem to cease in the near future.

Again,the greed of petro-capitalism will continue killing innocent people in Yemen and elsewhere.