Amiriyah shelter bombing

1991 bombing of a civilian shelter in Baghdad, Iraq by the US during the Gulf War

The Amiriyah shelter bombing was an aerial bombing attack that killed at least 408 civilians on 13 February 1991 during the Persian Gulf War, when an air raid shelter ("Public Shelter No. 25") in the Amiriyah neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq, was destroyed by the U. S. Air Force with two GBU 27 Paveway III laser guided "smart bombs". The U. S. Department of Defense stated that they "knew the [Amiriyah] facility had been used as a civil defense shelter during the Iran–Iraq War", while the U. S. military stated they believed the shelter was no longer a civil defense shelter and that they thought it had been converted to a command center or a military personnel bunker.

The Amiriyah shelter was used in the Iran–Iraq War and the Persian Gulf War by hundreds of civilians. According to the U. S. military, the shelter at Amiriyah had been targeted because it fit the profile of a military command center; electronic signals from the locality had been reported as coming from the site, and spy satellites had observed people and vehicles moving in, and out of the shelter. However, Human Rights Watch noted in 1991, "It is now well established, through interviews with neighborhood residents, that the [Amiriyah] structure was plainly marked as a public shelter and was used throughout the air war by large numbers of civilians". Satellite photos and electronic intercepts indicating this alternative use as a command and control center were regarded as circumstantial and unconvincing to Brigadier General Buster Glosson, who had primary responsibility for targeting. Glosson commented that the assessment wasn't "worth a shit". However, the unnamed human source in Iraq which had previously proven accurate warned the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that the Iraqi Intelligence Service had begun operating in the shelter. In addition, military vehicles were seen parked near the shelter, and unknown to the Coalition, many Iraqi officers brought their families to the building each night where Coalition reconnaissance aircraft were unable to detect. On 11 February, Shelter Number 25 was added to the USAF's attack plan. At the time of the bombing, hundreds of Iraqi civilians, mostly women and children, were sheltering in the building; many were sleeping. More than 408 people were killed; reports on precise numbers vary, and the registration book was incinerated in the blast. People staying on the upper level were incinerated by heat while boiling water from the shelter's water tank was responsible for the rest of the fatalities. The blast sent shrapnel into surrounding buildings, shattering glass windows and splintering their foundations.

Many foreign governments responded to the bombing at Amiriyah with mourning, outrage, and calls for investigations. Jordan declared three days of mourning. Algerian and Sudanese governing parties condemned the bombing as a "paroxysm of terror and barbarism" and a "hideous, bloody massacre" respectively.

Jeremy Bowen, a BBC correspondent, was one of the first reporters on the scene. Bowen was given access to the site and found no evidence of military use. The White House, in a report titled Apparatus of Lies: Crafting Tragedy, states that U. S. intelligence sources reported the shelter was being used for military command purposes. The report goes on to accuse the Iraqi government of deliberately keeping "select civilians" as human shields in a military facility at Amiriyah. According to Jane's Information Group, the signals intelligence observed at the shelter was from an aerial antenna that was connected to a communications center some away.

Under the 1977 Additional Protocol I (AP1) to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, Article 57 requires the attacking force to comply with the principle of distinction, that is, to do everything feasible to ensure the objective is a legitimate military target. However, the U. S. is not a party to API and several basic provisions contained within the protocol had not crystallized into customary international humanitarian law at the time of the Gulf War due to many other potential state parties objecting to it out of legal and military complications. The 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention was inapplicable to this situation due to its primary importance on humane treatment of protected civilians at the hands of enemy forces in an interstate conflict, not during actual hostilities. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) ruled in its 2000 case The Prosecutor v. Blaskic that to constitute a violation of distinction, the act must be committed "intentionally in the knowledge that civilians or civilian property were being targeted." Based on the evidence involved, the 1991 Amiriyah shelter bombing did not violate the principle of distinction because the U. S. commanders took necessary steps to ensure the target was not civilian. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)'s Commentary of 1987 on Article 57 of API stated: "Admittedly, those who plan or decide upon such an attack will base their decision on information given [to] them, and they cannot be expected to have personal knowledge of the objective to be attacked and of its exact nature."

Seven Iraqi families living in Belgium who lost relatives in the bombing launched a lawsuit against former President George H. W. Bush, former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, and General Norman Schwarzkopf for committing what they claim were war crimes in the 1991 bombing. The suit was brought under Belgium's universal jurisdiction guarantees in March 2003 but was dismissed in September following their restriction to Belgian nationals and residents in August 2003.