"U.S. bombs had also struck hospitals in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, and Iraq in the 1990s.
Associated Press reported on March 30 that a children’s hospital in Rutbah, in Iraq’s western desert, had been destroyed by bombs on March 28. Then on April 3 Reuters said that U.S. aircraft bombed a Red Crescent maternity hospital in Baghdad the day before along with other civilian buildings, killing several people and wounding at least 25.
The number of casualties in the first attack was not reported. A source at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said three were killed and 27 injured in the latter attack; it had been directed at a nearby building, but the roof of the maternity hospital collapsed and windows were smashed. It was part of a compound including Iraqi Red Crescent headquarters, fair grounds, and a surgical hospital. Evidently the hospital had been mostly evacuated some days earlier. Reports differed. An official Iraqi source said nine women died. Arabic News placed the toll at 30 killed, 215 wounded.
U.S. forces stormed a hospital in Nasiriya on April 1 and 2 and later showed evidence that it had been illegally used by Iraq for military purposes. But the Pentagon did not explain how the hospital could be legally attacked in the first place.
CARE reported April 15 that shells had directly hit the large Al Yarmuk Hospital in Baghdad the week before, destroying the third floor. Nothing was said about casualties.
Scores of hospitals and clinics were said to have been hit by U.S. bombs in the last dozen years; sources differ on the numbers of raids and casualties. Iraqi hospitals were bombed under George H. W. Bush in his 1991 Persian Gulf War and under William J. Clinton starting in December 1998. During the Clinton-NATO war on Yugoslavia, air attacks on hospitals in various cities, including Belgrade, Nis, and Surdulica, took lives in April and May 1999. In George W. Bush’s war on Afghanistan, 2001-2002, bombs struck hospitals in Herat, Kabul, and Kandahar; some reports placed the death toll in the hundreds."
Proposed Iraq Resolution
