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With Death at Their Door, Few Leave Iraqi City
Residents flee to a camp outside Tall Afar, which was seized by insurgents and is now the site of a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation.
(By Mohammed Ibrahim -- Associated Press)
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The soldiers escorted the crowd back to the other side of the wire but found that at least 500 other people were waiting to come across. To block them, they placed tanks and Bradleys along Bel Air and sent soldiers with rifles to the roofs overlooking the street.
Men who identified themselves as tribal leaders of the people attempting to flee would periodically walk across the street -- which is pockmarked with dozens of craters caused by explosions -- stepping gingerly over the wire to negotiate with soldiers. Some residents said that their relatives were too sick or frail to travel south of the city or that their tribe was located in the north so they needed to go in that direction. Others said they actually lived outside Sarai but had spent the night in the neighborhood and were trapped by the concertina wire. The soldiers refused to let them pass.
"I am sure 99 percent of you are good people who are telling us the truth," Capt. Alan Blackburn, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment's Eagle Troop, 2nd Squadron, which was policing the area around Bel Air, told one of the men who wanted to go north. "But I am sure that there are a few people in that crowd who are not good people. And we don't have the facilities here to check them. You have to go south."
"I am not going unless you drive me in a tank," the man said. "There are no bad people in Sarai. If you come with me, I will take you to all the houses and you can see. The bad people are the Shiites in the south."
Late in the afternoon, the soldiers relented and offered a compromise. They told the residents they could exit to the north if they agreed to board military trucks bound for a base just outside the city where they could be processed and then released if they proved not to have ties to the insurgency.
"It sounds like a trick to take us south to the Shiites," one man said.
"We will go only if we can drive our own vehicles," another countered.
About 3 p.m., Lt. Col. Christopher Hickey, the Squadron commander, arrived to make a final plea. "I am trying to help you to get out of a very dangerous situation. You are going to be in danger if you stay here, I am telling you," he said. "Please, this is your last chance."
As he turned away from the crowd, one family emerged, with nine adults carrying baggage and eight children in tow. "Anyone else?" Hickey asked, beckoning. "Okay, then we will save these people," he said, and walked away.
