A group of Iraqi army officers have staged a coup in Iraq and overthrown the monarchy.
Baghdad Radio announced the Army has liberated the Iraqi people from domination by a corrupt group put in power by "imperialism".
From now on Iraq would be a republic that would "maintain ties with other Arab countries". It said some 12,000 Iraqi troops based in neighbouring Jordan have been ordered to return.
Major-General Abdul Karim el Qasim is Iraq's new prime minister, defence minister and commander-in-chief.
As Iraq's new revolutionary government settled down to consolidate its rule, one of its first efforts was to erase the memory of the bloody regicide that brought it to power.
Though the number of people killed probably exceeded no more than 30, the rebels had an uphill job in hiding the bloodthirsty work of their own assassins and the permitted fury of the street mobs. Last week 10.000 Iraqis a day were trooping through the gutted mansion of 70-year-old former Premier Nuri asSaid, whose naked body was dragged through the streets a few days before. While the rebels begged newsmen to "see things as they are today, not as they were last week," and even closed the ransacked royal palace as if to erase the memory of the massacre there, grim tales of the revolt continued to come to light. In Athens a Belgian reported how the body of Nuri's son Sabah was dragged through the streets by a mob waving knives and portraits of Egypt's Nasser. And from his bed in Amman, 36-year-old British-trained General Sadiq Shara recited the gruesome events that took place around the swank New Baghdad Hotel.
High profile murder in Iraq
What happened in Iraq, when General Abdul Karim Qasim decided to take control of the government in 1958.The family (Mayada's family) was in Europe when they heard that General Abdul Karim Qasim, an army officer, had ordered a number of soldiers to surround the royal palace. Over loudspeakers, they ordered the family to step outside. It was only 7:45 in the morning, but soon afterward, the kitchen door at the back of the palace opened and the royals began to spill out. The officers shouted for the family to step toward the little garden at the side of the palace and stand next to huge mulberry tree. The royal family lined up, along with the servants. The very young king, confused, kept saluting the officers.A captain by the name of Al-Obousi shot at the king, splitting his skull open. Everyone else then opened fire. After the massacre, the bodies of the family were dragged to a van, and a crowd began to loot the palace.As the van passed through the palace gate, a man at the gate jumped into the van and stabbed all the dead bodies. The van was then stopped by a military jeep, whose soldiers took the bodies of the young king and the regent. Crowds had begun to gather, and to pacify the angry mob, the driver threw them the body of Faisal's regent, which was promptly stripped naked, dragged across Baghdad and hung from one of the balconies at the Al-Karhk Hotel.
The crowd then cut off the hands, arms, feet, legs and genitals, ripped off his mouth, then dragged what remained of the body to the Ministry of Defense and hung it there. A young man from the crowd then took a dagger and ripped open his belly and several men in the crowd draped the regent's intestines around their necks, like necklaces, and danced in the streets. Finally, someone took the regent's body, splashed it with gasoline and set it on fire. The remains were thrown to in the river.
King FAISAL II- Last king of Iraq
Crown Prince Abd al-Ilah ( Regent)
Prime Minister Nuri as-Said
"You Just Cannot Imagine." At 9:30 on the morning of the coup, a group of rebels arrived at the hotel in search of a general and three Jordanian ministers of the Arab Union. They ripped out telephones and ransacked the front office. With about 20 other foreigners, apparently seized at random, the Jordanians were loaded into a truck that started off for the Ministry of Defense. Among those seized were three Californians: Robert Alcock, George S. Colley Jr., senior vice president of Bechtel Corp. of San Francisco, and Eugene Burns, former A.P. correspondent. The truck drove slowly through milling streets. In front of the ministry gates the truck was trapped by a stalled vehicle in front of it, and the mob attacked.
"They tore off the tarpaulin and started pulling people into the street. One of my colleagues, Ibrahim Hashim, the Arab Union's Deputy Premier, who was sitting beside me, died from a stone hit in the head. Everyone who was pulled down was cut to bits. I saw a young German or Swiss of about 30 grabbed by the head and pulled down by the mob. About eight people started slashing and stabbing him and beating him with rods. Then they cut off his head. I did not see the death of the American, Burns, but later, one of our people told me he was pulled down and killed like the others. You just cannot imagine it.'' Finally someone got the gates open, and "those of us who were still alive on the truck tried to jump and run for it. Anyone who could not reach the gate was killed and dismembered." Shara made it.
Trying to live down the blood bath, the new government sent soldiers all over Baghdad with green paint to erase extremist anti-Western slogans. Photographs of violence (including pictures of the naked corpse of the Crown Prince hanging footless from a post, and the dismembered body of Premier Nuri being dragged through the streets) disappeared from shops. Strict orders were issued to the public against molesting foreigners. The violently anti-Western newspaper Al-Bilad was told to stop its inflammatory editorials; the radio kept issuing reassuring reports on the oil industry, whose refineries went on producing and whose foreign technicians were not bothered. Outside the burned-out hulk of the British embassy appeared a sign saying: "You should not have acted this way. These people are our guests and our friends." Premier el-Kassim himself reportedly told his London embassy: "For God's sake, make it clear to the West that we are still their friends."
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