Is it at all known if there were any people such as cleaning staff inside of it as it was blown away?
I need to know, this is vital information.
vital?
The odds are good that yes, there were probably a few non-combatants in the building. The odds are also good that they were all baath party members, who when/if the fighting comes to Iraq, will all be in the streets fighting.
However, in every event of conflict between the US and Saddam, we have taken special care to hit his palaces, both for psychological reasons and because the baath party tends to have offices in them. Knowing this, he should have cleaned out the buildings of any and all personel days ago. If there are civilian deaths in the presidential palaces, the blood, IMO, is on the hands of Saddam.
Well, one should expect that exact information such as the whereabouts of janitor so-and-so during the palace’s bombing to be scan – or nonexistent – so soon after the strikes. In any case, this may or may not help:
It’s “scant,” not “scan.” Urrrrgh.
The last figures I heard were 37 Iraqi civilians killed and 200+ wounded, those were figures from the Iraqi government, so take them FWIW, and I didn’t hear if the Iraqis said where those civilians were killed/injured, nor what caused their deaths/injuries. Journalists in Baghdad have said that they haven’t been taken to any sites where damage has occured, even though the Iraqi’s have claimed that they were going to let them see it. (My information is a few hours old, so it may be out of date.)
I also heard the Iraqi government claim that they destroyed 5 US/UK tanks, that are apparently, at last look, still there.