NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS- HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY. ........................................................................ PANORAMA IN THE LINE OF FIRE RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 9:11:03 ........................................................................ JOHN SIMPSON: This is a film about what really happens in war: the uncertainty, the mistakes, the bloodshed. It’s the story of how a group of people were caught up in the worst act of so-called friendly fire in the Iraq War. I saw this thing drop from the plane – I knew, something registered in my mind that there was something wrong. FRED SCOTT: I recall hearing someone shout… shout a warning, (sound of explosion) SIMPSON: That’s just the ammunition going up - just keep your head down. It’s coming back. It’s coming back! Get away from here! FRED SCOTT: Get down. SIMPSON: Keep down. Keep down. It’s just the ammunition going up. Just keep your head down. Altogether almost 30,000 bombs were dropped on Iraq. DRAGAN: Oh my God. SIMPSON: Is it ours? DRAGAN: Yes it is SCOTT: I saw it - white body. Red fucking nose. SIMPSON: I saw the same thing. Jesus - I can’t believe it. I saw the fucking bomb! This is how one of them went astray. SCOTT: Oh Fuck. Just overhead. SIMPSON: Where are the others? SCOTT: I have no idea. IN THE LINE OF FIRE SIMPSON: I think I ought to go and look for them actually. with John Simpson A Panorama Special This is just a scene from hell here - all the vehicles on fire. There are bodies burning around me. There are bodies lying around. This is a really bad own goal by the Americans. As so often, our journey started like this, in an airport, with masses of luggage and myself stuck anxiously to the phone. I was trying to get our team into Baghdad – or failing that, into Northern Iraq, so we could reach Baghdad in time to witness the fall of Saddam Hussein. Saying goodbye to his new baby, Chloe, our cameraman, Fred Scott, is also heading out. He’s just come back from assignment and has seen her for a single day in the last month. SCOTT: A baby changes a lot in five weeks.. you know.. you have to put her down again and go away again - for a while. (baby cries) I go in the door and I go out again with all this stuff. It was the first time for me to hear a baby crying. It’s not easy. SIMPSON: Our first stop is Turkey. SUMMERS: Are you counting the other side Tom? SIMPSON: From there, we’re getting ready to drive into northern Iraq. Our film editor, Dragan Petrovic, has flown in from Belgrade, even though his wife is about to give birth – he needed the work. Now, on the long trip through Turkey into Iraq, he hears she’s had a baby girl - Andrea. TOM GILES: How do you feel? PETROVIC: Absolutely lovely. SCOTT: So how big is the baby? PETROVIC: Don’t know yet. I’ve got to call in 15 minutes. SCOTT: A natural birth or a caesarean? PETROVIC: No idea – she said call in 15 minutes. SIMPSON: Congratulations. PETROVIC: Thank you. TOM GILES Producer I felt like you were bonding with people straightaway because there were things that were just intensely personal happening that everyone wanted to share in. FRED SCOTT Cameraman It sounds weird but you go off to a war and you're covering it and you tend to meet the nicest people. (laughs) People are kind of invariably at least interesting and sometimes just very bizarre. SIMPSON: After a three-day journey we entered Kurdistan: part of Iraq, yet independent of Saddam Hussein. It seemed a forbidding place. Arbil, Northern Iraq We reached Arbil, just 30 minutes from Saddam’s frontline: a dusty old city which was the capital of Kurdistan. From here we wanted to get south to Baghdad; but as the war came closer we realised it wasn’t going to happen as fast as we’d hoped. Up in the north, there was no real possibility of embedding ourselves with Allied forces: there were hardly any regular troops here. Even Baghdad would have been safer. The real danger in modern warfare is to be out in the open, without any protection. It was our choice to be here, but we knew it was dangerous. GILES: What we ended up doing a lot, was constantly going over and over again, in lots of cafes in lots of places, the same issues, how are we going to get to Baghdad, how are we going to move further south, what’s going to happen when the war starts? SIMPSON: [in Restaurant] The officialdom in Baghdad will start collapsing around the Monday, Tuesday.... Essentially we move on Saturday don’t we? Saturday or Sunday. I want to start broadcasting in those last days, one or two days before it happens. I want all of that stuff about people clearing out. The city going silent. People driving into the countryside. That sense of real despair and genuine fear that they are going to have. I’ve got to be there for that. SCOTT: There's the kind of frustrations about being cut-off from the story build up, the wilder the speculation gets about what to do for a story. SIMPSON: We can probably expect to be roughed up and shoved around and accused of all sorts of things and chucked in a very unpleasant jail. But I’d be amazed if anything..(laughter) ... as we are standing there with the blindfolds on. GILES: I have a family and you’re thinking all the time am I really going to do that? And these are the sort of scenarios, which seem incredible now but they’re the sort of scenarios we were actually talking about. They just meant all the time we were upping.. upping the pressure on ourselves. SIMPSON: And so then the thing is - how do we get there? So if we go on Saturday… Sunday 9th. Does everybody think that’s all right, Sunday 9th? Does anybody seem to be listening to us or not? We soon made our first excursion down to the front line where the Kurdish troops confronted Saddam’s army. We wanted to see how difficult it would be to get through. But the flat rolling plains seemed dangerously exposed. SCOTT: Yes we can be seen for a good fifty kilometres in every direction. SIMPSON: They're not very accurate. They’ll hit the car behind. MAN: Yes. (laughs) SIMPSON: On the nearby hills, right above us, we got our first glimpse of Saddam Hussein’s soldiers. Lined up, behind them, would be tens of thousands more. For now, as we filmed, their guns were silent. The lightly armed Kurds on our side of the frontline would clearly be no match. SUMMERS SUMMERS Security Adviser The front-line itself was dangerous because if the Iraqis had either attacked us or counterattacked us I think we’d have been very vulnerable. SIMPSON: [plotting route with group] We are going to go there because that leaves us exactly half-way between Kirkuk and Mosul, along this long road here. Most nights we returned to our hotel, still trying to work out a route through Iraqi lines to Baghdad. GILES: I don’t know how accurate these co-ordinates are but… SUMMERS: They just seemed to come strolling straight in. SIMPSON: Local Kurdish drivers and translators would come to our floor looking for work. One was Kamaran Abdurrazaq Muhamed, or Kamoo for short. He wanted to work with us, even though he understood the risks. He liked adventures, he said, and he wanted to be my friend. ARIYAN ABDURRAZAQ Kamaran's sister He came and told us he’d like to take this job with the BBC people. My mother wasn’t against it, but she was worried about what might happen to him in the war. But he really wanted to do it. He thought it would give him a chance to travel – even to go abroad. KAMARAN: We got some chickens - and set a fire of the chickens. SIMPSON: Burn the chickens KAMARAN: Yeah, yeah, burn the chickens. SIMPSON: As the war drew nearer for Kamaran and the other local staff, there was a sensitive issue. There weren’t enough flak jackets - the body armour issued by the BBC - to go around. Because of the enormous demand across the Gulf, the BBC didn’t have enough supplies for everyone we would employ in northern Iraq. And with the borders around Northern Iraq sealed, there was no chance of getting any more. SUMMERS: We travelled light, so we had to explain to the translators and drivers that we couldn’t provide them with flak jackets. SIMPSON: I don’t like going to one of these things absolutely covered up with the latest possible gear and then the poor little skinny bastard, sitting beside me, has nothing except.. you know.. his underpants. SCOTT: It ended up in a very awkward situation of some of us having the equipment and the training and the other guys - the guys who’d be in our vehicles - had nothing. SIMPSON: But it’s a bad business. I must say I do think it’s really bad. The war felt imminent. The UN gave a clear signal when it began to withdraw its foreign staff. SIMPSON: [on telephone] Just, Jonathan, for your planning purposes, we think some of the UN people are moving out tomorrow and we should be able to film them if we are lucky. The BBC had offered to give the Ministry of Defence and the Pentagon our exact position wherever we were so we wouldn’t be attacked. They weren’t interested. If we weren’t embedded, with coalition troops that was our problem. In the north, we couldn’t be embedded anyway. SIMPSON: [on telephone] At least somebody will know where we are when we are being bombed. Okay. It'll be a most expensive way of going. SIMPSON: By now, we had an extra guide to the front line and its hazards - an experienced Afghan photographer..- Abdullah Zaheeruddin.. He had good contacts with the Kurdish fighters. Abdullah became part of our forward team of two, sometimes three, vehicles.... And he liked to sing. ABDULLAH: [singing] Oooooh sun shiney day. One car in front of us. The other car behind. One carry the guns. The other carry satellite. Sun shiney dayyyy Sun shiney dayyy SIMPSON: To lessen the risk of our being fired on by mistake, our security adviser had taken steps to mark up our cars. KAMARAN: This is press? SUMMERS: That’s press in Arabic, yes. SCOTT: Sahafiya SUMMERS: Sorry? SCOTT: Sahafiyah SIMPSON: Are we going to have a TV on the roof or is the orange enough? SUMMERS: I think the orange plus TV will be fine and we will do that with gaffa tape. SCOTT: We had markings on the roofs of the vehicles. Big bright orange neon square with the letters TV on the bonnet, on the top, on the sides. Never really sure whether these guys can read that well at a thousand feet or higher. (laughs) SIMPSON: They couldn’t. We would only discover when it was too late that the American bomb-aimers used black-and-white screens. Our orange panels were no protection at all. By the night of 19th March the Coalition’s deadline to Saddam was about to run out. GILES: Are we getting our stuff packed and into the lobby? PETROVIC: I think so. We need to get our stuff packed and ready to go. SIMPSON: We drove into the rain to await the start of the war. Five hundred miles away, in the eastern Mediterranean, aboard the immensely powerful carrier USS Truman, the pilots were preparing for the massive bombing campaign code-named Shock and Awe. They’d be flying in our direction. Last-minute prayers are offered in the briefing room for their safe return. Lt HILLARY O'CONNOR F-14 Navigator, US Navy We ended up loading up our bombs and pre fighting the jet and then walking up there after having donned all your flight gear as normal, but instead of going out like that, stopping, getting your 9 millimetre pistol, putting it in your flight gear, and then finally getting up on the deck. Getting catapulted off into the night, you’re watching to make sure that you're safe and that the air speed's piling up the way it should and that your jet is getting away from the water the way it should. It's a pretty phenomenal experience. Right as we're entering country we get some more gas, and then went to our assigned station over northern Iraq waiting for our tasking. SIMPSON: Down below, on the hills above the front-line, we watched the start of the bombardment. SCOTT: So you set up the night scope and you just see the tracer from anti-aircraft fire going up and up and up and up. Lt Cmdr LARRY SIDBURY F-14 Pilot, US Navy It was pretty intense. There was a lot of anti-aircraft fire coming up at the aircraft. You see that stuff. It's very bright and has a tendency to really grab your attention. But it didn't really hamper our ability to still release weapons. FRED SCOTT Cameraman There’d be huge flashes. Some of the really big ones you wouldn’t hear so much but your clothes seemed to shake a bit. SIMPSON: In fact the threat to the American pilots was pretty limited. The Iraqis had no air force and only a few effective anti-aircraft systems. Even so they fired away at the Americans all the time. O'CONNOR: Once we were through with all that, turned around, got some gas and went home. A lot of time to be quiet and reflect on the gravity of what had happened and particularly for myself after the first time, to make your own personal peace with it. [NEWS] This evening the war seems to have started in earnest and US and British troops have moved out of northern Kuwait and into Iraq. SIMPSON: The bombing of Baghdad signalled the start of fierce fighting in the south. In the north, the Kurds scoured the front-line by night, waiting for any Iraqis to surrender. At first, they didn’t come. Then, as we filmed from the cover of an old graveyard, we saw the Iraqis open fire on their own positions. They were apparently stopping a mass defection along the front line. No one managed to escape. By first light the Iraqi lines still held firm. The soldiers were digging in. Just across from our front-line position, they were laying mines. Compared with the news of the coalition’s advance in the south, ours was a different and much less active type of war. We felt distinctly sidelined. TOM GILES Producer I think it didn’t take that long, a couple of weeks, for us to start getting a bit frustrated with just being stuck there. GILES: You’ve been miserable, grumpy, moody for three days. SUMMERS: No, one day. GILES: Oh, come on, two, three days. This food is shit. SUMMERS : Give me it here. How much xxxx -ing money does the x xxx want. MAN: 240 dinars I need SUMMERS: How much is that? MAN: 70. SUMMERS: I gave him seventy… xxxx-ing five as well. Where’s that seventy xxxx five you xxxx? MAN: Okay, okay. SCOTT: Oh now they’re in trouble. (laughs) SIMPSON: But the situation was changing for the Kurdish troops. From the skies above us, B-52s were now dropping their bombs, right on to the Iraqi positions opposite. (Sounds of explosions) Navy bombers had arrived from the Mediterranean fleet to hit targets selected by the American special forces on the ground. SCOTT: When they chose to engage, it was just horrific really. They would pick up speed and start banking very steeply, which make an awful tearing sound in the air. (sounds of aircraft) SIDBURY: You're worried 100% about identifying the correct target. So at the moment of release say on that tank, you're just worried about getting the weapon in its proper release parameters, releasing that weapon and providing support to that weapon until it impacts the target and then getting the proof of the target destruction SCOTT: You're not really thinking about - wow - there's somebody in that tank that's going to die. The absolute terror that that caused us. You’d see 20 or 30 guys running for it, getting out of their trenches and running for it, and you think “yes – go, go.” (Sound of explosion) SIMPSON: The increasingly terrified Iraqis had to cross the river if they wanted to escape the bombs. On the other side Craig and our translator, Kamaran, came across two deserters. CRAIG SUMMERS Security Adviser One had been walking for two days, they hadn’t eaten. They didn’t know what was going on the south. They were telling us that there was Fedayeen who were positioned behind their position, so if anybody wanted to withdraw, they’d be shot. SIMPSON: But there were other worries too. ARIYAN ABDURRAZAQ Kamaran's sister Kamaran wasn’t coming home as often now as before. And when he did he was physically and mentally exhausted because of what he was dealing with at the frontline. Sometimes he’d tell us what he was up to. He said he’d interviewed two Iraqi deserters but he’d never give any details. GILES: I think that we’ve got a good tip-off SIMPSON: By the next morning, everything had started to change: the front-line was shifting. GILES: No one defended the position, they just pulled back, they just got up and left, and then everything became a lot more dangerous. SIMPSON: Kamaran, who didn’t have a flak jacket himself, was well aware of that. KAMARAN: Please wear your flak jackets. GILES: Okay, thank you. (cheering soldiers) SIMPSON: The Kurdish fighters celebrated their new conquests - won without a fight. The Iraqis had simply run away from their positions, abandoning their uniform. Beside the road, the Kurds had begun clearing anti-tank mines in their own fashion. They were digging up anti-personnel mines as well. That day, we’d had some disturbing news from another part of northern Iraq. (Sound of explosion) After driving into a minefield, a BBC producer, Stuart Hughes, had lost his lower leg. The BBC cameraman, Kaveh Golestan, whom I’d often worked with, was killed. We drove on towards the final front line position. GILES: You’d be driving down a road and you’d be thinking blimey there’s nothing here.. there's no one here. What’s going on? And of course the Iraqis had pulled back, the Kurds had gone forward, but no one was that clear about how far the Iraqis had pulled back, how far you could you go, at what stage the Iraqis could start firing at you. SIMPSON: The Kurds were unhappy about our being this far forward. They explained that the Iraqis had only pulled back to the ridge just ahead. And there had already been cases elsewhere of the Americans bombing their own friends. JOHN SIMPSON This, for the time being, is as far as the main body of Kurdish troops wants to go. Not because they’re scared of the Iraqis. They’re worried that the Americans might mistake them for Iraqis and attack them. They don’t want any friendly fire in this area. The entire battlefront was becoming very dangerous. Lacking heavy weaponry, the Kurds were almost wholly reliant on the small numbers of US special forces, heavily outnumbered, who called in air strikes against the Iraqis. As they advanced towards the Iraqi-controlled cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, the Kurds and Americans became alarmingly exposed. (Sounds of machinegun fire) An ITN team filmed as the Americans ran forward to take up position. The Kurds fired rockets . You can see the Iraqis returning fire. With the front line shifting so fast the American special forces were under much more pressure when they called in air strikes. The pilots could sense it. Lt ROBERT ROY F-14 Pilot, US Navy Looking down, hearing voices on the radio and hearing the background that there is actually gunfire in the background and hear the tone in their voice that: "Hey, I'm under attack here, come down and help us". Lt Cmdr RON STINSON F-14 Navigator, US Navy You hear the machine guns going off in the background and at times you just hear a bunch of guys yelling and screaming. ROY: So that really gets your attention and your heart pumping and wanting to do everything you can to help that young kid out. SIMPSON: But in order to do this, the pilots were dropping their bombs very close to their own side. GILES: You’d see these planes come right over your head and you just think, I hope that they know that we’re not what they’re supposed to be dropping their bombs on. SIMPSON: They flew right over our heads, making a dreadful roaring noise. It was the sound of countless bullets per second strafing the unfortunate Iraqis below. The Iraqi defences were starting to collapse. ABDULLAH ZAHEERUDDIN Photographer and Fixer It was a feeling something will happen, and I told my friends we are now as very farther, we are out of control and the American don’t know this front line has moved. April 6th SIMPSON: Early one morning, we joined the Kurdish advance, walking through the debris left by American bombs. At that point Abdullah heard from a Kurdish commander that the important town of Dibagar had just fallen to the Kurds. ZAHEERUDDIN: I say you sure? and he said: "Yeah, yeah". And John says: "Okay, we are done here, and let’s move". SIMPSON: We set off in three vehicles up the road to Dibagar. The whole area was disturbingly empty. We were getting increasingly nervous, and I was about to tell the driver to pull in and wait when something unexpected happened. SUMMERS: Behind us came a massive convoy of vehicles, and it turned out that it was some American special forces and Kurdish special forces, so it was decided then that we’d tag along with them at the back. SIMPSON: We should try and get behind the troops. We've got to get past this blue one and get behind the white Toyota with the soldiers on the back. I feel this is probably flak jacket time. DRAGAN: Flak jackets on. SIMPSON: As we came up to the ridge line, Kamaran urged us not to get out: the convoy was just about to move. We could hear the sound of American aircraft, but we weren’t worried. We were with American troops, after all, and missions being flown across this front continually. Lt HILLARY O'CONNOR F-14 Navigator, US Navy The radios were always very busy, always looking for new tasking, looking for where you were most needed, where you were being told to go. Lt Cmdr RON STINSON F-14 Navigator, US Navy We were very anxious to assist them, to maintain and make progress towards the south to aid them in any way we could, and a lot of guys take that extra chance to help those guys down there. SIMPSON: Jesus its chaos. Fucking chaos! DRAGAN: Just tell Fred we are right behind them so they know. Move Craig. We're right behind you. GILES: Ah, this is more like it. Open road makes me happy. Suddenly it opened up, you know we were really moving forward fast, and at that point I thought, you know this is exciting in a way because it looks like we’re genuinely moving forward to a town that’s been liberated, 15:37:50 SCOTT: That tower there is Dibigan GILES: Shit - you’re right SCOTT: Don’t pass him, whoa, whoa, whoa! Behind him. Behind him. SIMPSON: Just ahead, at a road junction, a Kurdish military cameraman is filming. American special forces are taking up positions nearby. An Iraqi tank has been abandoned by the side of the road. In the haze, a mile away, several other Iraqi tanks are manoeuvring. Amid the gunfire, the Americans get ready for the battle that’s starting to develop. They have called in two F-14s, which are already circling low overhead as we arrive. GILES: [Over radio phone] We are in a big convoy of serious looking general types and a lot of weaponry. There is air support flying around over our heads. It all looks quite promising at this stage. Just to let you know. I got your message that you got into the next village. FRED SCOTT Cameraman I just remember looking up and seeing two American planes circling overhead. I'd never seen them that low before. I mean they must have been about 500 feet or so up on their edges, and thought… hey hey… (laughs) At last, you know, an easy picture of one of these things. GILES: The phone went and it was my mum, my mother, just calling to say: "Hi Tom. How are you? Happy Birthday." And of course, maybe in all the fuss, it had sort of slightly slipped my mind, it was my birthday. SIMPSON: The Kurds look for the Iraqi tanks through their rifle-sights. Tom is standing at the back of one of our vehicles, talking to his mother. GILES: She said: "Where are you? How’s it going?" And I said ah you wont believe, it's hard to say, you know.. we're nearly… we're out on the outskirts of Kirkuk, it's all very exciting. And I just remember I held the phone up, because this noise was overwhelming…. (Sound of aircraft) …and I said to her, as a sort of joke, because I knew that she wasn’t terribly keen on the war: "Listen mum, it's the sound of freedom." Just at the moment I held the phone up it was incredibly loud the noise, and then it just got louder. SIMPSON: I was only about twelve yards away from the bomb. So were the rest of the team… SCOTT: The next thing I know I was just face down on the road. I'd been blown flat on my face and I remember kind of twitching my arms and my legs to feel if I was all still there. Blood was just dripping off my face. It just splashed onto the front of the camera as I started to record. I started to crawl and just remember thinking 'they're coming back, they're going to come back and hit us again', because it's what we'd seen every other time. SIMPSON: This guy right beside me. Are you alright? (injured man groaning) SCOTT: I think they've fucking hit their own forward vehicle. SIMPSON: The ammo’s cooking off stay down! (screams – scene of chaos and confusion) (sound of explosion) SIMPSON: It's just the ammunition going up. Just keep your head down. GILES: I slumped a bit, and then got up and ran, but it felt very quick, and I just saw this sandbank and I jumped over it, and just backed against it, waiting for the next one to go off, because the sound was still overwhelming. The phone was still in my hand, and I suddenly saw the signal was still up and my mum was still there, you know she’d heard the whole thing, and I just, I could almost sort of hear a sort of: "Hello, hello" and I picked… I just basically took the phone and said.. you know: "Mum, I’m fine, it’s friendly fire, the Americans they’re firing on us." SIMPSON: The phone call from Tom’s mother had saved his life by stopping him from walking into this horror. Just a few feet from where he had been standing . This is what war is really like. I’d been hit by several bits of shrapnel, my eardrum had burst, and some of my clothes had been torn off by the explosion. Our group was completely scattered. Dragan Petrovic had already risked his life to come and help me. Now he was filming with his own camera. PETROVIC: Fred, just turn towards me mate. SCOTT: How’s my eye? PETROVIC: You’re all bloody SIMPSON: They're coming back! It's coming back! Get away from here! (Sound of approaching aircraft) PETROVIC: They’re coming back – please… SIMPSON: Gradually, as the ammunition exploded around us, we tried to work out what had happened to the rest of the team, who were separated from us by the explosion. Where are the others? SCOTT: I have no idea. SIMPSON: I think I ought to go and look for them. SCOTT: John - lets just hold tight. PETROVIC: That’s our car burning. SIMPSON: That’s our car burning! PETROVIC: Oh my god! SCOTT: Is it ours? PETROVIC: Yes it is. SCOTT: I had no idea where anybody was. I mean I just instantly assumed that… you know.. we're all dead or half of us is dead or.. you know.. what… SIMPSON: Look they’ve got those bodies on there. I know its the Yanks. Can we get over there. Oh they’re just going to fuck off aren’t they? SCOTT: [calling out] Hey! Oh fuck - just overhead. It's RPGs that are cooking off. SIMPSON: I know. I need to get back to that car. There's somebody that…. SCOTT: John you can’t go back. Just wait for them to call these guys off. I saw it. A white body, red fucking nose. SIMPSON: I saw the same thing! Jesus I can’t believe it! I saw the fucking bomb! PETROVIC: It hit right next to us. SIMPSON: I took a bit of shrapnel in the leg PETROVIC: I've got a bit in my leg as well. SIMPSON: Have you? I present a big target you see. (Calling to American) Have you called you’re friends off. Excuse me.. Have you called them off? Have you called them off yet? AMERICAN SOLDIER: They're getting called off. SIMPSON: Let’s get in there Fred. Let’s get in there. There were no more bombs. The planes were circling to see what damage had been done. Dragan, Fred and I went back towards the place where the bomb had landed to look for the rest of the team. We were terribly afraid the others in the team were dead. The others thought we’d been killed too. SUMMERS: I was looking for blue flak jackets, that was the thing that stuck in my mind, look for the blue flak jackets. No blue flak jackets and I thought, oh my god, where are they? SIMPSON: Craig! Craig, you okay? SUMMERS: Yes, we're fine, mate. MAN: What? SUMMERS: We’re fine. I spoke to London I’ve told them what’s happened. SIMPSON: Let me do a report. SUMMERS: Yes – there you go John. American own goal! DRAGAN: It hit next to us mate. SIMPSON: That’s not somebody in the back of our vehicle there is it? SUMMERS: No - it’s not. I can’t find Kamaran.. CRAIG SUMMERS Security Adviser For some reason, I don’t know what it was, I just looked over to the left and I saw him lying on the bank. SUMMERS: Yeah, there’s Kamaran lying down on the grass. I’m going to go and check him out. SIMPSON: I’ll come with you. SUMMERS: John you do your piece please. I’ll sort it. Kamaran! Kamaran! He was making gurgling sounds. I physically had a look round, there was no major injuries that I could see on the chest or anything or in the head, apart from a little nick on his throat. I then looked down and saw that the best part of his foot was missing and there was a lot of blood. SIMPSON: Fucking morons! SIMPSON: [on phone] This is just a scene from hell here. All the vehicles on fire. There are bodies burning around me. There are bodies lying around. There are bits of bodies on the ground. This is a really bad own goal by the Americans. We don’t know how many Americans are dead. There is ammunition exploding in fact from some of these cars which is why…. SUMMERS: Kamaran - stay with me guy. Come on man. US SOLDIER: Nothing I can do about that throat. Put a tourniquet on both legs. SUMMERS: Kamaran stay with me guy. Come on Kamaran. Are you alright Fred, there? FRED SCOTT: Yeah. It's alright mate, stay with us. Come on Kamaran. SUMMERS: Go on Fred. I will stay with him. You go… go away mate. PETROVIC: Can we get some assistance please? US SOLDIER: Oh yeah, have a seat. Have a seat. Sit down. PETROVIC: I’m fine. It's just a bit of shrapnel. I shall be alright. SOLDIER: Have you got anything else anywhere. PETROVIC: No I’m fine. Just help my friend. SOLDIER: No problem - where are you hit? SCOTT: I think somewhere up here. PETROVIC: Have they been called off - sorry. SOLDIER: I’m going to look at this guy real quick and then I'll move up there. SCOTT: [with blood-covered face and closed eye] I don’t think this is serious. There are some other guys that are… SOLDIER: Yeah we are going to go up there in a second. Let me see your eye. Open it up. Okay, good. Feel anything else? You’ve got nothing else anywhere else huh? SCOTT: No, I'm just…. SOLDIER2: Mike! SOLDIER1: What? No, move up there, move up there. PETROVIC: Is Abdul Basset OK? SIMPSON: Yeah everyone is fine. I haven’t seen Abdullah. And Kamaran is very seriously injured. SCOTT: Tom just duck down a bit just because there's all that stuff still cooking off. SIMPSON: I’m really worried about Kamaran. SUMMERS: I then shouted to Tom, Tom come over here and help me here with Kamaran. I need a hand here. GILES: I remember just walking towards Kamaran through this just bits of things. I remember seeing what looked like a brow and then a bit of what looked like brain and then a bit of arm or... And it was just sort of… you just.. you know, you just had to walk through this. And there was Kamaran, and then these medics, American medics were just there and they just turned and they said, “Do you know him?” And I said “Yeah, I know him.” And they said, “You’ve got to talk to him.” SIMPSON: Out of vision of Fred’s camera, Tom starts talking to Kamaran, trying to keep him going. GILES: Kamaran it's Tom, try and hang in there. You're going to be okay. Keep going. Stay still. Kamaran it's Tom. We'll be back in Arbil soon. Okay, we'll be back in Arbil. Keep going there, okay. You're going to be fine. He was barely conscious, you know he was just lying there just groaning. PETROVIC: John - the cars are catching fire. John ...... GILES: I remember holding his hand and he seemed to come round. We're here for you, okay? You've got to stay still. Hang on there, you're going to be okay. We've got help, we've got Americans, we've got…. GILES: Both legs were obviously bleeding badly, because I suddenly realised that I was just covered in.. covered in his blood, and I don’t know, it just, everything just sort of.. I can’t remember how long I said hang on in there. I can’t remember how long I said, you’re going to make it, we're going to be back in Arbil soon. I honestly convinced myself that actually he was going to be okay, because the Americans were saying, there’s no problems with his lungs, there’s no problem with his heart, and you could see there were no injuries to his chest, which is just as well, because he didn’t have a flak jacket. PETROVIC: Just sit down, relax for a while. We need it. We need to calm down for a while. I need a cigarette. US SOLDIER: We have got as many alive - I think the one’s that are alive are going to make it. You took some fucking shrapnel in your chest buddy, be glad you got that on, let me tell you that. You’ve got two huge fucking gashes in here. SIMPSON: By now, several of the Americans were beginning to talk to us about what happened. SUMMERS: The first American who I met he apologised and said that he was sorry and I believe he was the guy who was part of the team that called in the close air support, because he mentioned that he fired on the tank and then that registered in my mind that the tank that they were going for was the one that was parked up next to where myself and Tom were standing. SIMPSON: This is a disaster that should never have happened. I’ve just been speaking to the American Special Forces Officer who actually called in this air strike without realising, of course, that it was going to hit him, his men, us and our colleagues here. This is just one of those things that happens in war I suppose. His men have been going around saying: "I can’t tell you what I feel about this". But it has to be said if it hadn’t of been for the medical aid that they gave us and our colleague who has been badly injured, then we'd be even in a worse state than we are already. Dragan and the others helped the Americans to load Kamaran, unconscious, onto the back of a special forces Land Rover. But there was one more colleague still unaccounted for. SCOTT: No one had seen Abdullah and there were basically burning vehicles with lots of bodies still underneath them. I remember thinking the only way I'm going to recognise them at this point is if I can see his camera, if I can find that, and if there's a body attached to it, well then that would be Abdullah. You haven’t seen the Afghan guy who was with us? He is a photographer. US SOLDIER: A few minutes before it hit he was taking pictures of us. Our vehicle was parked just behind this one that is turned over on its side. SCOTT: Yeah, when I saw you, I said hi, as I came up. US SOLDIER: Yeah, and you walked up and then I heard it coming in, and I kind of turned away and ducked and… SCOTT. Do you think he’s gone..? SOLDIER: I thought he went this way. SCOTT: [calling] Craig - have you see Abdullah? SUMMERS: No, we're looking for him now Fred. SCOTT: John – he's not under this car, is he? SIMPSON: I don’t think so. I think that's one of the drivers. I’m not sure - it might be him there. This is the only possibility, this one. SCOTT: I don’t see anyone under it this side apart from one of the Peshmerga. I've been to the aftermath of a number of explosions before, at suicide bombs, artillery, the rest of it, and I'm familiar with the smell of burning people. But the terrible thing this time was the sound of fat crackling and just knowing that you're trying to find a friend who's possibly in all this somehow. SIMPSON: But we couldn’t find him. One of our team was gravely injured, and now Abdullah was missing. We’d got news to Kamaran’s family that he’d been wounded. We’d also rung our own families and friends to say we were OK. Craig and Fred managed to get their car started. They headed back to Arbil, in the hope of finding Abdullah. SUMMERS: Are you ready mate? SCOTT: Sorry about that.. SUMMERS: Don’t worry. SCOTT: ?? SUMMERS: So's mine. I can’t hear in my left side. I thought you'd copped it mate - I really did. You and John I thought and Dragan. Tom was next to me and I thought Tom had been hit. I thought I’d taken something in the side of my head. That’s it Fred - I’m going home man. Just a bit gutted about Kamaran. They’ve got to have a fucking inquest into that mate. Thought it was a tank! SIMPSON: Forty-five people had been injured in the blast and at least 16 Kurdish soldiers were already dead – the worst instance of friendly fire in the war so far. Kamaran’s family were waiting at home. ARIYAN ABDURRAZAQ On the morning of the accident he called up and said Mum do you need any thing? We said no - we just called you to see how you are and he said I’m ok and maybe I’ll come home tomorrow. I think now he wasn’t in the hotel when he spoke to us - but he said he was, to make us feel better. At 11:30 they called us and said that Kamaran was injured, but my younger brother, who took the call, didn’t tell me. NARIMAN ABDURRAZAQ Kamaran's brother We took a taxi to the hospital to find out how bad it was. My little brother started crying. I saw many people standing around and waiting. When I went in they told me to sit and wait, that he was in the operating room. SIMPSON: The bomb had devastated an entire community, touching dozens of families including that of the Kurdish President himself. His son was slightly injured but his brother Wajeh Barzani was left in a coma. He’s severely disabled. By this time, most of our team had been taken to hospital in Arbil, with shrapnel and other injuries. We had at least found out there that Abdullah was alive. FRED SCOTT Cameraman One of our fixers very skilfully negotiated me through the crowd and through the gates and found Abdullah who was pretty dazed and stunned. But being Abdullah he was the centre of attention, you know, in this ward and it was great seeing him. He was okay. SIMPSON: Abdullah had been closest of us all of us to the bomb and took this picture an instant before it landed. ABDULLAH ZAHEERUDDIN Photographer and Fixer I thought like my head is gone, gone like a two three metre away, and I ask forgiveness from God, and I thought it's in two minutes, or in one minutes I will fall down. SIMPSON: Abdullah managed to scramble away on one of the first vehicles which carried the wounded out. He took this picture as he left. But Kamaran’s brother was still waiting in the hospital for news. NARIMAN ABDURAZAK: The policeman there called for somebody to pick up Kamaran’s stuff and his mobile, and there and then he told me he is gone. He is dead. So I went home and told my mother who still had no idea that anything had gone wrong, and all I could say to her was: "God gave us Kamaran and now he took him back" I couldn’t say any thing else. ARIYAN ABDURAZAK: Then they took Kamaran’s body to the mosque to wash him, and then they brought him back home to us so we could see him and we kissed him goodbye. SIMPSON: Kamaran Abdurrazaq Muhamed had been our colleague for just six weeks. We, the team who were responsible for him, were shattered. ABDULLAH: The next day I see Tom, he come to the hospital and he told me Cameron dead and it was very sad, we lost this boy. Sad. Young boy. SCOTT: He was basically just you know...a kind of very young man who hadn’t really seen very much in life and he was just snuffed out, and he died a very painful death as well. And it’s not that any of us were more deserving of that but I think it’s fair to say that he was the least deserving.” SIMPSON: The friendly fire incident was only a brief episode in a battle which wasn’t yet over, though its outcome was never in doubt. Wounded, tired and disoriented, we sat in our hotel, trying to work out what to do next. A lot of people had paid a heavy price in the war in northern Iraq - including journalists. TOM GILES Producer By this stage we had lost an Australian cameraman, blown up by a suicide bomber, a Channel 4 journalist who had died, our own cameraman, Kaveh had been blown up, killed by a land mine. His producer, Stuart was injured, in the end lost his lower leg, and suddenly our translator was dead and all these people were dead and at the same time the war was just going on heavily everywhere else, so people weren’t even interested where we were. There wasn’t even much interest in what was happening in this front. SCOTT: I was totally deaf on one side and thought.. you know.. gotten away with this, you know.. am I going to be able to get my hearing back? So in terms of deciding to leave there was a lot of discussion about whether some or all of this would go. CRAIG SUMMERS Security Adviser It had been a close call, and at the time the remainder of the team I think decided as well that it was time to go. I don’t feel guilty about that decision now. I think I’ve done a good job within myself, and whether I would make the same decision again, I don’t know. SCOTT: I just had a feeling that the story had just washed past me. Apart from the hearing – I just couldn’t quite see what the point of staying was. April 9th [NEWS] American troops sweep into Central Baghdad as Saddam is symbolically toppled. SIMPSON: The sudden collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime changed everything. Pull the statue down, and there it goes. (cheering crowd) SIMPSON: In the streets of Arbil the Kurds celebrated wildly. ARIYAN: Just days after Kamaran’s funeral, we heard gunfire celebrating the toppling of the regime. We were very sad at first, because Kamaran always said that he hoped one day to see the regime fall and to see everybody free It was sad to remember his words – when everybody in his team and his friends saw this happen but he never did. SIMPSON: Although our colleagues had decided to go home, Tom and I, together with a news producer Oggy Boytchev, felt we had to keep going. GILES: I was supposed to make a film about getting to Baghdad and I had just… no way had got to Baghdad. In fact I was still, after all this time, in the same hotel that I'd been in at the start. So I felt like I wasn’t going to go - you know, I just hadn’t done what I was supposed to do. SIMPSON: After spending a week covering the fall of Iraq’s northern cities, Tom and I finally reached Baghdad. I hadn’t been allowed back since 1991 when I'd reported from here in the last Gulf War. I had promised to take Kamaran here with us; he had never been to Baghdad. Regime change had left it in a state of open chaos. Every government building was ransacked. At one hospital we went to they had to fire to ward off the looters. The patients were caught in the middle. The doctor did his rounds with a Kalashnikov. DOCTOR: This patient has burns from the bombs and all her family are dead. SIMPSON: In the intensive care unit lies a little girl; the extent of her suffering is impossible to imagine. In a way, she too is a victim of friendly fire: she too has paid for her country’s liberation. We went on to the ultimate symbol of Saddam Hussein’s power: his parade ground of victories. From the marble VIP stand above, we looked down at the parade ground itself. Saddam himself used to walk out here to review his forces. This is the spot from which he once famously fired a gun, to prove he was still in complete control. Now it was American tanks which were on parade. Enormous military power had been used to bring down the worst dictator of recent times, but the lives of thousands of ordinary Iraqis had been destroyed as well. Almost 30,000 bombs and missiles had fallen on Iraq. We'd been hit by just one, and we still didn’t know why. It’s May, and the two carriers from America’s Mediterranean fleet are returning home to a rapturous reception at their base in Virginia. They’ve been away for months. By this time, after much effort, we’ve managed to discover that it was planes from one of these carriers that struck us. A short distance away, they’re arriving back at the navy’s airbase. No one could deny that they’d fought a highly successful air campaign. Among those returning are this squadron of F-14 “Tomcats”. It’s been an anxious time for those at home. LT CMDR SIDBURY: To see my family again was tremendous. It was just fantastic to climb out of the airplane and have them run up to you and give you a big hug. At that point you know you're home, so it was great. Lt HILLARY O'CONNOR F-14 Navigator, US Navy So much joy and so much welcoming, my parents came to see me as my husband was still on deployment. Since then I'm now in the process of getting divorced and I think that being away has taken a lot of toll on my family situation. So you know.. a little bit down the road here it's somewhat bitter sweet. SIMPSON: Fathers from the carriers get their first glimpse of the babies which have been born while they were away. They’re proud with what they’ve done. Rear Admiral JOHN HARVEY Battle Group Commander The story is a great one. Over 8000 young Americans took the might and mission of the United States forward to the far corners of the earth delivering devastatingly accurate, lethal and persistent strikes from the sea in support of our military operations in Iraq. SIMPSON: The F-14 squadrons from both Mediterranean carriers are based here at the Navy’s Oceana airbase. At first the press spokesman denied that the Navy had been involved in any friendly fire incident. Then it was confirmed to us that this was wrong – and that it was an F-14 plane from the USS Truman which had bombed us. The Truman’s F-14 squadron is called "The Swordsmen". Their planes carry distinctive markings - swords on the tail fin. Maybe it was one of the bombs marked up so proudly on the aircraft side which had been dropped on us. We were allowed to interview four F-14 aircrew from the base on condition we didn’t ask them about friendly fire. We were told that none of them was involved in the incident. Apparently an official investigation was underway. Seven months on it still is. After repeated requests the Americans eventually gave us a briefing on condition we didn't say where it came from. During it we were told that a member of the American special forces, seemingly under great stress, had requested an air-strike on the Iraqi tanks a mile away from us. He told the pilot he didn’t have time to give him a grid reference; though looking back we still can’t see why he was under such pressure. We were given details of the exchange between the plane and the man on the ground. The pilot says: "I see a road, I see an intersection, I see vehicles." The man on the ground says "Roger, that’s your target, you’re cleared to fire." But it was the wrong intersection; the vehicles were ours and those of the Kurdish and the American special forces we were with. One of them radios up shortly afterwards: “Ceasefire. Ceasefire" he says. "You’re hitting friendlies. We’ve taken casualties.” There may well have been recklessness on the part of some of those involved. But the real problem seemed to be the particular system of close air support the Americans were using. It meant they could drop a 1000 pound bomb on such inadequate information. No co-ordinates No grid references. As for why any of us should have survived the dropping of the bomb, the Americans call it ‘the bug-splat effect’: the force of the explosion is spread in one particular direction, we just happened to be outside the main blast even though we were only a dozen yards away - except of course for poor Kamaran, who was standing only a few feet from me when he was hit. September, 2003 This autumn we went back to Northern Iraq. In Arbil, everything was returning to normal. Many more people were on the streets - including Iraqis escaping the uncertainties further south. We felt we should go again to see Kamaran’s family. The BBC had helped them financially but we wanted to show them how much we personally had valued him. Oh well, here we go. I knew it would be an emotional meeting. The family were expecting us. We were met by Kamaran’s younger brother first, and then by his elder brother, Nariman who had returned home to take care of his mother and three younger sisters. Before he died, Kamaran had been in effect the father of the house. SIMPSON : [to family] We came just to say how sorry we are. His brother told us they wished it had all been different. They thought Iraq would be free and they would be happy. But Kamaran’s death had changed all that. [to family] I just wish that it hadn’t happened and that we didn’t have to sit here and talking about it like this and that he was here with us. They showed us pictures of Kamaran with his friends at university. And we showed them pictures that Abdullah had taken of Kamaran working with us. No words we could say were adequate. ARIYAN ABDURRAZAQ Kamaran's sister Kamaran was everything to us. He’d always make time for us to go out. .and to have fun with us. He was like a father to my sisters, my younger brother and to me. Everything in my life holds a memory of him. SIMPSON: Finally, we went back down the road to Dibagar. Apart from an abandoned mortar shell and some gun cartridges, there was little to show that 16 people - maybe more - had died here. The crater, where the bomb fell, has been filled in. There’s just an old road sign still standing. As often in war, there’s no memorial - nothing. The mound where Kamaran’s life ebbed away is now just a patch of scorched earth. For those of us who survived, we’re deeply grateful to be alive, of course – yet I’ve been left with a deep sense of guilt. Why should my life and those of the rest of my team have been spared by a series of what seem like near miracles, when the young man who was standing near me when the bomb landed, and all those others, have died? Spring has turned to summer, and summer to autumn; yet there’s still no official statement on why this happened. It’s a strange, numbing feeling. SCOTT: I'm not feeling particularly angry. I'm not feeling in the least bit sort of forgiving. I just feel extremely lucky and grateful to be alive and basically healthy when so many others aren't. But from there, I don’t know. SIMPSON: Kamaran Abdurrazaq Muhamed, who chose to work with us because he wanted to be my friend, is now buried next to his father. He was 25: just one of thousands of people who were killed in this war. For anyone whose life has been touched by this kind of loss, nothing makes it any easier to bear. In memory of all those Who lost their lives in the 2003 Iraq War _________ John Simpson will be talking more about his experiences in Iraq to Julian Worricker on Tuesday morning from 9 on BBC Radio Five Live 909 and 693 AM. www.bbc.co.uk/panorama CREDITS Reporter JOHN SIMPSON Camera FRED SCOTT With DRAGAN PETROVIC JONATHAN YOUNG JIMMY MICHAEL MARK MOLESWORTH VT Editor BOYD NAGLE Colourist GEOFF HOCKNEY Dubbing Mixer ROWAN JENNINGS Production Co-ordinator EMMA HILL ROSA RUDNICKA Web Producer ADAM FLINTER Film Research KATE REDMAN With thanks to OGGY BOYTCHEV STUART HUGHES STEVE DOODS (BBC NEWS) Archive JULIAN MANYON (ITN) JANE ARRAF (CNN) ZAKI CHEHAB (AL HAYAT LBC) APTN BAYERISCHER RUNDFUNK ATLAS ESPANA FRANCE TELEVISIONS FRANCE 2 NTV TURKEY KURDSAT Research KATHLEEN POSNOR Production Manager GINNY WILLIAMS HELEN COOPER Unit Manager LAURA GOVETT Film Editors ANDY KEMP SIMON THORNE Assistant Producers SARAH MOLE JOANNA LEE Associate Producer RICHARD GRANGE Producer TOM GILES Deputy Editors ANDREW BELL SAM COLLYNS Editor MIKE ROBINSON 9 _____________________________________________________________________________________________ If you have any queries regarding this programme, please email: panorama@bbc.co.uk