THE US Army has mislaid 200,000 Iraqi civilians in the last four years but thinks most of them have probably just gone on holiday for a “bit of a break”.
Official watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office said it had looked everywhere for the Iraqis, who were definitely there before their country was invaded.
However, the official report for the Pentagon says the missing citizens appear to have vanished “in a puff of smoke” after the US Army moved in.
US Army spokesman Major Eugene Irwin said he was confident most of them were still around somewhere and that they would all turn up “sooner or later”.
Major Irwin said: “I do have to admit it’s very odd, whole villages and towns just appear to have emptied of people almost at exactly the same time as our soldiers and airmen turned up.
“We think they’ve all gone on holiday or are staying with relatives but it does seem strange. I mean why would they completely demolish their own houses and reduce their villages to rubble if they were just going out of town for a few days?”
