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A shooting after nightfall

January 19, 2005

A car with eight Iraqis inside was headed toward an American patrol in Tal Afar, in northern Iraq, late Tuesday at dusk, when the soldiers were said to have fired warning shots to try to make it stop.

Apparently, the soldiers' warning went unheeded, said Chris Hondros, a photographer with Getty Images who took these pictures. They redirected their guns so the bullets pierced the windshield. The car rolled to a stop.

It was not the first time soldiers in Iraq have fired on vehicles driven by people who were either uncomprehending of the danger or unwilling to stop. Insurgents killed a soldier and wounded two others on patrol in Tal Afar just two weeks ago.

Hondros, embedded with the 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry Stryker Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division out of Fort Lewis, Wash., captured the immediate aftermath.

As the soldiers moved the car, one of the six children, who suffered a nonlife-threatening flesh wound, was taken to the hospital. None of the other children was injured.

Their parents were reportedly killed. Click below for a longer account written by Hondros of the incident, which is under investigation by the U.S. military.

(GETTY IMAGES PHOTO/CHRIS HONDROS / January 18, 2005)

The following is an account by Getty Images photographer Chris Hondros from Tal Afar, Iraq, about 40 miles west of Mosul. A U.S. military statement released after the incident said "military officials extend their condolences for this unfortunate incident," according to the Associated Press. The military said that, so far this year, at least five suicide car bombers have struck Iraqi security troops and U.S. military patrols at checkpoints in the area.

A routine foot patrol -- a dozen or so men from a platoon, carefully walking the dusky streets of Tal Afar just after sundown.

Usually little more happens than finding someone out after curfew, patting him down and then sending him home. On daylight patrols, sometimes, troops stop to briefly play with children or even drink tea. On evening patrols -- past curfew -- no one is on the streets, and the men are extra-vigilant and professional.

Tal Afar is an ethnically mixed town, though primarily Turkoman, and had only days before been the scene of a gun battle between U.S. forces and local insurgents.

On the evening of Jan. 18, as we made our way up a broad boulevard, in the distance I could see car making its way toward us. As a defense against potential car-bombs, it is now standard practice for foot patrols to stop oncoming vehicles, particularly after dark.

"We have a car coming," someone called out as we entered an intersection. We could see the car about a 100 meters away. The car continued coming; I couldn't see it anymore from my perch but could hear its engine now, a high whine that sounded more like acceleration than slowing down. It was maybe 50 yards away now.

"Stop that car!" someone shouted out, seemingly simultaneously with someone firing what sounded like warning shots -- a staccato, measured burst. The car continued coming. And then, perhaps less than a second later, a cacophony of fire, shots rattling off in a chaotic, overlapping din. The car entered the intersection on its momentum and still shots were penetrating it and slicing it. Finally, the shooting stopped, the car drifted listlessly, clearly no longer being steered, and came to a rest on a curb. Soldiers began to approach it warily.

The sound of children crying came from the car. I walked up to the car and a teenaged girl with her head covered emerged from the back, wailing and gesturing wildly. After her came a boy, tumbling onto the ground from the seat, already leaving a pool of blood.

"Civilians!" someone shouted, and soldiers ran up. More children -- it ended up being six all told -- started emerging, crying, their faces mottled with blood in long streaks. The troops carried them all off to a nearby sidewalk.

It was by now almost completely dark. There, working only by lights mounted on ends of their rifles, an Army medic began assessing the children's injuries, running his hands up and down their bodies, looking for wounds. Incredibly, the only injuries were a girl with a cut hand and a boy with a superficial gash in the small of his back that was bleeding heavily but wasn't life-threatening. The medic immediately began to bind it, while the boy crouched against a wall.

From the sidewalk I could see into the bullet-mottled windshield more clearly. The driver of the car, a man, was penetrated by so many bullets that his skull had collapsed, leaving his body grotesquely disfigured. A woman also lay dead in the front, still covered in her Muslim clothing and harder to see.

Meanwhile, the children continued to wail and scream, huddled against a wall, sandwiched between soldiers either binding their wounds or trying to comfort them. The Army's translator later told me that this was a Turkoman family and that the teenaged girl kept shouting, "Why did they shoot us? We have no weapons! We were just going home!"

There was a small delay in getting the armored vehicles lined up and ready, and soon the convoy moved to the main Tal Afar hospital. It was fairly large and surprisingly well outfitted, with sober-looking doctors in white coats ambling about its sea-green halls. The young children were carried in by soldiers and by their teenaged sister. Only the boy with the gash on his back needed any further medical attention, and the Army medic and an Iraqi doctor quickly chatted over his prognosis, deciding that his wound would be easily repaired.

The Army told me it will probably launch a full investigation.