| Iraqis say troops massacred families { March 21 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/3736946.htmlhttp://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/3736946.html
March 21, 2006, 2:15AM Iraqis say U.S. troops massacred families Military official calls allegations 'highly unlikely'
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle News Services
BAGHDAD, IRAQ - Residents gave new details Monday about the shootings of civilians in a western Iraqi town, where the U.S. military is investigating allegations of potential misconduct by American troops last November.
The residents said troops entered homes and shot and killed 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a Marine.
The military, which announced Thursday that a dozen Marines are under investigation for possible war crimes in the Nov. 19 incident, said Monday that a videotape of the aftermath of the shootings in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, was presented in support of the allegations.
In a more recent incident, Iraqi police accused American troops of executing 11 people, including a 75-year-old woman and a 6-month-old infant, in the aftermath of a raid last Wednesday on a house about 60 miles north of Baghdad.
The villagers were killed after American troops herded them into a single room of the house, according to a police document obtained by Knight Ridder Newspapers. The soldiers also burned three vehicles and blew up the house, the document said.
A U.S. military spokesman, Maj. Tim Keefe, said that the U.S. military has no information to support the allegations.
"We're concerned to hear accusations like that, but it's also highly unlikely that they're true," he said. He added that U.S. forces "take every precaution to keep civilians out of harm's way. The loss of innocent life, especially children, is regrettable."
The report of the killings in the Abu Sifa area of Ishaqi, eight miles north of the city of Balad, is unusual because it originated with Iraqi police and because Iraqi police were willing to attach their names to it.
The charges against the Marines in the Haditha incident were first brought forward by Time magazine, which reported this week that it obtained a videotape two months ago taken by a Haditha journalism student that shows the dead still in their nightclothes.
The magazine report mirrored what was told to The Associated Press by residents who described what happened as "a massacre." However, Time said the available evidence did not prove conclusively that the Marines deliberately killed innocent people.
A military spokeswoman said Monday the allegations were being taken "very seriously."
Khaled Ahmed Rsayef, whose brother and six other relatives were killed, said the roadside bomb exploded about 7:15 a.m. in the al-Subhani neighborhood, heavily damaging a U.S. Humvee.
A U.S. military statement in November described it as an ambush on a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol that left 15 civilians, eight insurgents and a U.S. Marine dead in the bombing and a subsequent firefight. The statement said the 15 civilians were killed by the blast, a claim residents denied.
The residents said the only shooting done after the bombing was by U.S. forces.
"American troops immediately cordoned off the area and raided two nearby houses, shooting at everyone inside," said Rsayef, who did not witness the events."It was a massacre in every sense of the word."
Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, said about 12 Marines were under investigation for possible war crimes in the incident. He said the case was referred to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
The Associated Press and Knight-Ridder contributed to this report.
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