BAGHDAD, March 27 (UPI) -- The Arab language TV news network al-Jazeera said Thursday that coalition strikes had landed in a residential area in the northern city of Mosul -- killing or wounding at least 50 people -- while 10 more people were killed and 44 others injured in the continued assault on Baghdad.
Al-Jazeera showed footage of destroyed houses in a residential quarter north of Mosul where relief workers were searching for bodies buried under the rubble. It said some 50 people, mostly women and children, were killed or wounded.
A military official with the U.S. Air Force Command in the region told United Press International "the only thing we've dropped on Mosul in the last 24 hours is leaflets." They were unable to immediately comment on whether the pictures might have shown the result of previous airstrikes.
"They are all children and women," a woman who was fleeing the targeted area with family members and neighbors told al-Jazeera. "Why all this? If I see an American soldier, I will tear him apart," she said.
Al-Jazeera also showed pictures of dozens of angry Iraqis carrying coffins of at least 17 people in Mosul, shouting anti-U.S. slogans and pledging to defend Iraq.
A woman was fighting back tears when she said: "We will all sacrifice ourselves for the sake of Iraq" while an elderly man poured out his anger against U.S. President George W. Bush and defied him to depose Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Samir Aziz Najm, an Iraqi military official, said the strikes on Mosul showed that the U.S. and British forces were targeting residential and not military positions.
Meanwhile, initial reports indicated 10 more Iraqi civilians were killed and 44 others wounded in renewed bombings on Baghdad Thursday in a residential complex affiliated with the Ministry of Housing. The final number of casualties was feared to be higher.
Brigadier Hatem Ali al-Khalaf, head of the Civil Defense Department, said coalition warplanes dropped cluster bombs, some of which did not explode.
Coalition officials have previously denied that cluster bomb have been used in residential areas. U.S. policy, says officials, is to use these bombs only on the battlefield.
