US raid killed children - video

2006-06-02 18:22

Baghdad - A third case of United States troops allegedly deliberately killing Iraqi civilians is fuelling a furore in Iraq.

"It looks like the killing of Iraqi civilians is becoming a daily phenomenon," said the head of the Iraqi Human Rights Association, Muayed al-Anbaki, on Friday, after a video of the bodies of children, shot dead in a raid in Ishaqi in March, ran on television.

On Thursday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki upbraided the US military over allegations that marines killed two dozen unarmed civilians in Haditha. He called the killings "a horrible crime".

US commanders have ordered "ethics training" for all its troops in Iraq. But the flow of revelations and investigations threatens to undermine Iraq's new government and public support in the US for its president, George W Bush, and his management of the war.

Iraq's government has begun its own investigation of the Haditha deaths.

In the Haditha case, marines allegedly gunned down 24 civilians in revenge for a bombing, in which a marine was killed, last November.

At least five children dead

Now seven marines and a US navy corpsman could face charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy in the April shooting death of an Iraqi man.

A lawyer for one of the men, Jeremiah Sullivan III, said on Thursday that military prosecutors plan to file the charges against the men, held in solitary confinement at a marine corps base in California, USA.

The video aired on Friday shows footage of a March 15 US military raid in the village of Ishaqi, about 80km north of Baghdad.

The US military had said four people died when the military attacked a house suspected of holding an al-Qaeda operative. The house was destroyed.

But footage shot by a news cameraman at the time shows at least five children dead.

'They wanted to hide the evidence'

The video also shows at least one adult male and four young children with obvious entry wounds to the head. One child has an obvious entry wound to the side caused by a bullet.

Locals said there were 11 total dead. They said they were killed by US troops before the house was levelled.

The video includes a man saying there were "children were stuck in the room, alone and surrounded.

"After they handcuffed them they shot them dead. Later they struck the house with their planes. They wanted to hide the evidence. Even a six-month-old infant was killed. Even the cows were killed."

Other video shows the bodies of three children in the back of a pickup truck that took them to the hospital in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's former hometown.

On Thursday, the US military's major general William Caldwell said "about three or four" inquiries were being carried out.

Iraqi officials said US forces killed two Iraqi women - one of them about to give birth - when the troops shot at a car that failed to stop at an observation post in Samarra on Wednesday.

- AP