For its part, the US military occupation forces announced that they had begun an investigation of the Marine who shot the little girl and promised to punish him if he is found guilty.

A source in the Iraqi puppet army told Mafkarat al-Islam that the American soldier was very drunk at the time of the killing and that he was withdrawn from his observation post after the incident.

The father of ‘A’ishah, who works for the Railroad Department said that residents in the area where his little daughter was killed told him that the American had been betting with his buddies whether he could hit the little girl who had come out of the school some 700 meters from the US observation post.

For its part the American propaganda TV station called “al-‘Iraqiyah” blamed what it called “terrorists” (by which they meant the Iraqi Resistance) for the shooting of the little girl, but statements by the US military and the Iraqi puppet forces exposed the “al-‘Iraqiyah” story to be a lie.