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Worcester remembers U.S. & Iraqi war dead
by Mike Benedetti
Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2005 at 1:55 PM
This past Sunday, February 13, ten people gathered at the Desert Shield/Desert Storm memorial on Worcester Common for the annual vigil to remember and pray for the casualties of the war on Iraq.
Hundreds of names of American and Iraqi dead were read. It is estimated that if all the dead whose names are known were recognized, the vigil would have lasted over seventy hours.
The text of a flyer handed out at the event:
Remembering the Casualties of War on Iraq
The 14th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of the Ameriyah Shelter, Baghdad, Iraq, on February 13, 1991
We are here today to remember the dead of the war on Iraq, which began in August of 1991. We do so alongside a memorial to nine of the 1991 American military casualties, because this figure underestimates the war's cost in human lives. We do this on the day when 317 Iraqi civilians were killed in the Ameriyah air raid shelter by two U.S. precision bombs. We mourn all the war's victims--civilians and soldiers, Iraqis and Americans. We hope that a full accounting of the casualties will inspire us to end this war, and find peaceful ways to resolve future conflicts.
And so, we mourn the deaths of 1,657,943 people in Iraq:
- 293 American, 24 British, and 2 French soldiers killed in 1991
- 35,000+ Iraqi civilians killed in 1991
- 100,000+ Iraqi soldiers killed in 1991
- 300+ Iraqis killed by U.S./British airstrikes from 1992-2003
- 1,500,000+ Iraqi civilians killed by sanctions from 1991-2003
- 2,320+ Iraqi soldiers killed in March and April of 2003
- 1,453+ American, 86 British, 16 Polish, 1 Danish, 11 Spanish, 20 Italian, 18 Ukranian, 7 Bulgarian, 2 Estonian, 1 Salvadoran, 2 Dutch, 3 Slovakian, 1 Latvian, 1 Hungarian, 1 Kazakh, and 2 Thai soldiers killed since March, 2003
- 17,902+ Iraqi civilians killed since March 2003
"War in the Persian Gulf will be useless slaughter."
--Pope John Paul II, 1991
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