US military investigates massacre claims
US military investigates massacre claims
Also In The News
|
Manchester City manager Stuart Pearce has revealed defeat in the FA Cup at the quarter-final stage is a bitter pill to swallow, with his side crashing out at home 2-1 to an energetic West Ham side. |
Tuesday, 21, Mar 2006 11:24
Claims that US troops massacred 15 Iraqi civilians last year are to be investigated by defence chiefs.
The influential US magazine, Time, has published a video which it claims shows the aftermath of the massacre in Haditha in western Iraq.
Dead bodies wrapped in rugs and bloodstained rooms are shown in the footage, which Time says was a result of US marines shooting dead civilians in revenge for the death of one of their colleagues in a roadside bombing.
According to residents and eyewitnesses cited by the magazine, marines were involved in a "devastatingly violent response" on November 19th last year, following 20-year-old Texan serviceman Lance Corporal Miguel (TJ) Terrazas' death
Fifteen members of two local families were shot dead in the reprisal attack after marines visited their houses, residents claim, while a number of suspected insurgents were also killed in the surrounding area.
Time claims US military chiefs only admitted that the 15 shot dead in Haditha, including a young girl according to witnesses, were "noncombatants" after the magazine in January presented a military spokesman with video footage shot by a journalism student following the deaths.
Prior to that, the US military said that the deaths were the result of the same roadside bomb that killed L Cprl Terrazas.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is now probing the incident, with 12 marines the subject of the investigation to determine whether they broke military laws by deliberately targeting civilians.