The US forces of occupation killed eleven members of the Harat family, including six innocent children and four women in a rural cottage in Alsaffa village in Ales-haqi district near Samara. This is the latest in the US’s defunct ‘war of terror’; in this occasion, the US used hundreds of troops and latest lethal weaponry in its air assault on this poor family home. One of the children was only four months old!

The family neighbour Mohammed Almajma’ey describes the details of this crime as his tears fell. ‘At 1.30pm, the US occupation troops backed by helicopters attacked the family residence of Fa’is Harat, a teacher at the local primary school.

At the school where the two victim teachers had worked was overwhelmed with grief.  The children stayed home that day as a mark of respect and mourning of the dead murdered at the hands of the US forces.

One of the children, named Nawfal Abdullah, said his teacher Fa’is Harat used to drive him to school. ‘He was such a kind-hearted man, who loved Iraq very much’. Another of Fa’is’s pupils named Osama, who was taught by Fa’is for two and a half years and looked on to his teacher Fa’is as a father figure, chose not to talk about his sense of bereavement – he let his bitter tears do the talking instead.

Mohammed Almajma’ee, a work colleague of Fa’is Harat who shared with him many chats over lots of cups of tea, said ‘the school had lost one its best teachers’ as he watched his close friend being buried, and ‘Fai’s and his sister were good people’.