According to some of the analysis done here on some information by (of all people) Robert Fisk, it may very well have been US munition that hit an Iraqi marketplace (despite reports that the air defense commander for Baghdad has been sacked because so many SAMs are misfiring or landing back in the city).
What may make this ironic is that it might not have been inadvertent. If the analysis is correct (and it sure sounds good), the missle was a HARM, a radar-killer: low explosion, high shrapnel. Such munitions lock onto a radar signal and home in on it — or on the last location it was spotted.
So, if an Iraqi mobile radar truck turned on its signal just long enough to direct some anti-aircraft fire, then took off out of the nice open marketplace it was using to get a broad horizon, a HARM that was locked onto its position might well have hit said marketplace very shortly thereafter.
Which begs the question, of course, of who’s actually responsible, and what can be done (on the Coalition side) to avoid a repeat …
Did you hear that the missile that landed in the water next to Kuwait City was one of our cruise missiles? It’s getting to be that there’s no safe-zone anywhere in that region, from either side’s armaments!
Based on the “Cage Number” found on the metal fragment fround at the scene it is a cruse missile (Tomahawk). The cage number tracks back to Reytheon.
Stan, can you post a cite to that? The only analysis I’ve seen (linked above, with further notes here) seems to point to a HARM, not a Tomahawk.
Some of the link’s I had have gone away. Others narrowed it down to the Paveway or the Harm. All moot since the Navy backs up Tim’s supposition.
My bad.
Though one thing I did find interesting was that the HARM’s also track Sat-Phones.
I don’t know whether that’s confirmed, or just suspected (along the lines of cell phones and PCs interfering with avionics). On the other hand, if someone suggested to me that I might want to put away my satellite phone while folks were launching HARMs in the area, it might be worth while doing so.
That does raise the possibility, of course, that an innocent civilian use of a satellite phone in the marketplace in question could have been part of this tragedy.
Satellite phones are currently illegal in Iraq. All civilians have been ordered to turn them in and anyone found with one is being charged as a spy.
Hmmm. Any journalists on the scene? Any journalists missing?