A US soldier who tried to help injured Iraqi civilians after a US apache strike says his superior ordered him not to tend to the injured children on the scene.
Ethan McCord, a US infantry soldier, was one of the six troopers who were dispatched to the scene after the apache helicopters killed a dozen people, including two Reuters staff, in Baghdad.
"When I came on the scene I saw the bodies, I could hear a child crying, so the crying was coming from the van so I immediately went up to the van and when I looked inside I saw a girl who's about three years of age, she had a belly wound, and glass in her eyes and in her hair," McCord told Press TV in an exclusive interview on Sunday.
"The team leader who was standing there told me I needed to stop worrying about these motherf$@%ing kids," said McCord, a father of two.
The July 2007 incident was captured by the US military. The classified video was acquired by WikiLeaks through military whistleblowers.
The group released the video which showed an aerial view of a group of men moving about a square in a Baghdad neighborhood before being targeted by the apache chopper.
McCord says he is struggling with mental problems dealing with the "real destruction," after he consulted military for assistance.
The psychiatrist "told me I needed to suck it up, … and to be a soldier and he told me that there would be repercussions," McCord said. "Right now we have a large number of suicides taking place in the US among military personal or recently returned vets from Iraq and Afghanistan."
He also noted that he has been trying to talk to local media in the US to tell the story, but "nobody wanted to listen; nobody wanted to hear about anything."
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