What happened at the Diyala Bridge, and why the civilian casualties?
On their way from Kuwait, the Marines had crossed two of the world’s great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. During the battle of Baghdad, they found themselves stuck at a 60-meter tributary called the Diyala River. They were trying to cross it. There were reports that suicide bombers were headed for the bridge, and that had been a real threat before in the days before, this was true. So the American forces were very nervous. They were taking no chances. When the reports [came] that people were coming across the bridge, they wound up just more or less firing at any vehicle that tried to cross, even if it turned out to be civilians fleeing. A number of civilians were killed. It was one of those tragic realities of what happens in war. We think of this war as one that had a lot of high-tech equipment, bombing from great heights. This was bloody, old-fashioned war, just like it was in the Middle Ages, and it was pretty grim. Was one of the reasons that deaths occurred that the Marines
