display
Both hits were perfectly on target - and led to a catastrophe.
Because the laser-guided special bombs penetrated the meter-thick reinforced concrete ceiling of the bunker in western Baghdad and detonated inside.
But the goal, a 40 by 40 meter building with large technical dormers on the roof a good ten kilometers from downtown Baghdad, was full of civilians on February 13, 1991 at around 4:30 a.m.: women, children and old men.
Probably 408 of them (200 to 300 according to other sources) died in the explosion of almost half a ton of highly explosive explosives.
They were shredded by splinters, slain by rubble or squashed by the enormous shock wave that rushed through the bunker and was, so to speak, "reflected" by its thick walls.
One of the two hits on the roof of the bunker
Source: Getty Images
It could never be confirmed whether there were actually up to 1000 people in the shelter at the time of the impact - allegedly the registry book was burned in the attack.
What is certain, however, is that the dead who became known were civilians and not soldiers.
This was confirmed by the BBC reporter Jeremy Bowen, who was there a few hours after the fatal hit.
display
The air offensive against Iraq lasted just under four weeks, especially against military installations.
With astonishing accuracy compared to previous wars, the US and its allies had destroyed hundreds of targets in Baghdad since January 16, 1991.
So Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein was to be shown his total inferiority - the hope was to be able to forego a ground war to liberate occupied Kuwait because Iraq would withdraw under the pressure of the air strikes.
The bunker, officially called "Public Air Raid Shelter No. 25", was set with precise position information two days before the attack on the US Air Force's target list for the coming nights.
It had long been considered a potential target because intelligence information, including interviews with engineers who had been involved in converting the bunker, indicated that it would be used for military purposes.
The Al-Amiriya bunker in Baghdad shortly after the US Air Force hit
Source: Universal Images Group via Getty
On February 10, 1991, CIA analyst Charles E. Allen informed US Air Force officer John Warden, who was responsible for target selection, that in his opinion the bunker actually served as an "alternative command center" and was therefore a legitimate military target ;
there are “no signs that the building is being used as a civilian air raid shelter”.
display
So General Buster Glosson, the commander in chief of air operations against Iraq, ordered the Amiriyah bunker to be placed on the target list.
At that time, almost 100 of the 594 known Iraqi bunkers were considered destroyed and a further 242 were seriously damaged.
So there would have been plenty of other goals.
An F-117 drops two "Bunkerknacker" of the type GBU-27.
Source: picture-alliance / dpa
Immediately after the catastrophic attack, Saddam Hussein's regime briefed the international journalists who were still in Baghdad and took them to the scene.
The Iraqi leadership had actually planned to do just that four weeks earlier, but the air strikes by the US Air Force from the early morning of January 17, 1991 were overwhelmingly so precise that civilian losses were minimal.
That had now changed in one fell swoop.
A few hours after the attack became known, representatives of the US military presented indications that the destroyed facility was a command bunker after all.
The building was actually erected as a civil defense facility in the mid-1980s, but later reinforced with an additional concrete ceiling and equipped with protective measures against electromagnetic impulses - an effect of atom bomb explosions at very high altitudes that can destroy electronic devices.
CNN correspondent Peter Arnett on the roof of the bunker hit on February 14, 1991
Source: Getty Images
display
But the spokesman for US President George HW Bush, Marlin Fitzwater, had said in his first reaction to the reports by Jeremy Bowen on the BBC and Peter Arnett on CNN: “The death of civilians in war is really tragic.
It saddens us all to suspect that innocent people may have died in a military conflict. ”Fitzwater speculated that Saddam's“ willingness to sacrifice the lives of civilians in order to achieve his war aims ”may have been a factor.
The Pentagon then expressed itself more defensively.
“It looks like civilians have been injured here.
We will investigate the incident very carefully and see what we can do differently in the future to rule out a repeat, "said Lieutenant General Thomas Kelly, the chief of operations of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He admitted that he had no reliable information for a “double” use of the bunker as a civil defense system and as a command center.
The place of the one impact
Source: Universal Images Group via Getty
The tragedy reignited the public debate about warfare.
UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, who had repeatedly criticized the extent of the United Nations-approved US attacks, expressed his “deep regret” over the deaths of civilians in Baghdad.
At the same time, signals came from Moscow that there was "cause for hope" for a negotiated solution.
Fitzwater commented that the US government welcomed the Soviet efforts to persuade Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait.
A sheer promise, however, is not enough to end the air strikes: "We want to see a massive retreat," said the White House spokesman.
Khaled Mohammed Nasser lost his family in 1991 when he was hit in the bunker
Source: AFP via Getty Images
A journalist then asked whether Saddam had won a PR victory by bombing the bunker?
"I think everyone loses when civilians die," replied Fitzwater. "It's a really tragic situation." A senior government official was quoted as saying, "In every war there are civilian deaths.
Unfortunately, this is one of those incidents. ”That was an undoubtedly correct statement, but one that was no longer of any use to the victims of the attack.
After the end of the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein's regime, which was able to assert itself in power, had the bunker turned into a memorial.
Foreign delegations also laid wreaths here, for example from the Vatican.
Mourning in the memorial that the destroyed bunker became in 1991
Source: Getty Images
Years later, Belgian lawyers filed war crimes lawsuits against former US President George HW Bush on behalf of the relatives of seven Iraqis killed in the attack.
A Belgian law passed in 1993 made it possible for anyone to bring foreign heads of state or government to justice for genocide and war crimes in Belgium.
But because this regulation was neither practicable nor compatible with international law, the parliament in Brussels effectively repealed it in August 2003.
You can also find “World History” on Facebook.
We look forward to a like.