HUMAN SHIELDS SAY THAT IRAQI CLAIMS ARE LIES:

THE US military says an Iraqi claim that buses carrying human shields had been bombed has proved to be false.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf yesterday said several people were wounded when a US warplane attacked two Iraqi buses carrying the volunteers. . . .

In Amman yesterday, volunteers arriving from Iraq in a road convoy denied coming under US attack.

“We saw damaged vehicles on the side of the road that were hit, but we did not witness any bombardment,” American Scott Kerr said.

The 27-year-old, from Chicago, was among a group of 14 peace activists from the United States, Britain, Canada, Ireland and South Korea who drove out of Baghdad in a convoy of three mini-buses.

The whole “human shield” thing has been kind of a bust for the Iraqis, really. It’s almost as if they were set up from the beginning.