Word: samarra
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...then there are the cases of what--at least to Iraqi eyes--are just tragic misunderstandings. In Samarra last week three Iraqi teenagers were killed and 10 injured in what the U.S. describes as a fire fight with American troops. But staff members at the local hospital say the Americans responded to innocent firing from a wedding party. (The U.S. military is investigating.) ORHA had already announced plans to ban celebratory firing, but communications in central Iraq are so poor--there is effectively no functioning TV or radio--that it is doubtful whether anyone in Samarra had heard of them...
...some U.S. officials are right, Iraqi engineers and scientists are in a race with time. Deep underground in the Salman Pak, Samarra and Tuwaitha complexes near Baghdad, they are thought to be developing biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and perfecting ways to deliver them. If so, they are not the only ones racing. Inside the headquarters of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency outside Washington, Pentagon mapmakers are reviewing satellite imagery pouring in from Iraq every day. They are updating the Digital Point Positioning Database, made up of computerized maps showing the coordinates of Saddam Hussein's key weapons facilities...
...main base of power -- and included several trusted officers from Tikrit, Hussein's hometown. Last week, in possibly another planned attack, a former head of army intelligence claimed that several Republican Guard officers were charged with planning to assassinate Saddam and his two sons. The general, Wafiq al-Samarra'i, told the Arab media that Hussein responded by reorganizing the elite force that protects him and his family. The reports point to the mounting pressures on the leader and increasing dissatisfaction among the Iraqi people, says TIME Beirut bureau chief Lara Marlowe. "Under the circumstances, there...
...November. According to German reports, German companies also provided Iraq with 90% of its chemical-weapons capability. Most of the exports were dual-use items. Manufacturers told German customs officials that the shipments involved factory parts for the construction of pesticide plants. Actually they were destined for complexes like Samarra and Salman Pak, where Iraq developed its chemical and biological weapons. Now, warns Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, "U.S. troops may have to fight their way through Germany's chemical exports to destroy Germany's nuclear exports...
...disappear. . They were used during the Iran-Iraq war, sometimes with devastating consequences for combatants, but with almost none for the environment. Since the gulf war began, allied planes and missiles have pounded Iraqi chemical- weapons plants, situated about 25 miles northwest of the Shi'ite holy city of Samarra, that manufacture mustard gas and nerve agents. Because the plants are surrounded by a 25-sq.-km (9.6-sq.-mi.) "exclusion zone," the likelihood of a deadly plume invading populated areas is small. Explosives would also tend to break the gases down into less deadly substances. Harmful chemicals that penetrated...