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Photographs taken by American military intelligence have provided crucial
evidence that up to 24 Iraqis were massacred by marines in Haditha, an insurgent
stronghold on the banks of the Euphrates.
One portrays an Iraqi mother and young child, kneeling on the floor,
as if in prayer. They have been shot dead at close range.
The pictures show other victims, shot execution-style in the head and chest
in their homes. An American government official said they revealed that the
marines involved had “suffered a total breakdown in morality and leadership”.
The killings are emerging as the worst known American atrocity of the Iraq
war. At least seven women and three children were among those killed. Witness
accounts obtained by The Sunday Times suggest the toll of children may be as
high as six. “This one is ugly,” a US military official said.
In Britain, the chief of the defence staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup,
said yesterday that the “appalling” reports of the massacre could
undermine British support for the war. “This sort of accusation does make
that harder to achieve,” he said.
The pictures of the dead, which are being closely guarded by the US naval criminal
investigation service, were taken by a military photographer who is believed
to have arrived on the scene moments after the shootings.
Many American forces are accompanied by photographers to gather intelligence
and to shield soldiers from false accusations of torture, intimidation and violence.
In this case, the evidence points fatefully to a murder spree by marines.
The stain on the American military could prove harder to erase than the photographs
of sadistic prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
Comparisons are being made to the My Lai massacre in 1968 in Vietnam, in which
American soldiers slaughtered up to 500 villagers.
Up to a dozen marines may face criminal charges including murder, which carries
the death penalty, dereliction of duty and filing a false report. Three marine
commanders were suspended last month.
The naval inquiry is focusing on the actions of a sergeant who may have been
the leader of a four-man “fire team”.
Miguel Terrazas, 20, a lance-corporal from El Paso, Texas, was travelling in
a convoy of four Humvees in Haditha just after 7am on November 19 last year
when a roadside bomb struck his vehicle, killing him and wounding two others.
The events that followed are the subject of two military inquiries due to report
soon: one into the facts, the other into a cover-up.
One witness, Aws Fahmi, heard his neighbour, Yunis Salim Khafif, plead for
his life in English, shouting: “I am a friend, I am good.”
“But they killed him, his wife and daughters,” Fahmi said.
It is clear the marines lied by blaming the deaths of 15 civilians on the roadside
bomb and alleging that a further eight Iraqis were insurgents who died in a
gun battle.
Asked last week how many Iraqis were killed by the roadside bomb, a Pentagon
official said: “Zero.” The marines never came under hostile fire,
a spokesman added.
Investigators have established that the killings unfolded over three to five
hours. “This was not a burst of fire, but a sustained operation,”
a Pentagon official said.
The Sunday Times has reconstructed the events with the help of Abdul Rahman
al-Mashandani, of the Hammourabi human rights group in Iraq. It appears the
first killings took place when a taxi carrying four students pulled up at a
checkpoint set up by the marines.
Abu Makram, 50, had been awakened by the roadside bomb and watched from his
window as the terror unfolded. The car’s occupants were all ordered out
and shot.
The marines then stormed three nearby houses. “They blew open the front
door of the first house,” Makram recalled, “Once they were inside,
we heard another explosion followed by a hail of gunfire.”
It was the home of 76-year-old Abdul Hameed Ali Hassan, whose leg had been
amputated because of diabetes. “He was a blind old man in a wheelchair,”
Makram said.
Hassan’s granddaughter, Iman Waleed, 10, was in her nightclothes. “About
10 marines entered the house,” she said. “They threw hand grenades
and began firing in all directions. Grandpa was sitting close to the hall and
they shot him dead.”
In a nearby room, her father was reading the Koran. “The American soldiers
went into the room and killed him too,” Iman said. “They gathered
all of us into one room — my grandma, my mama, my brothers and my uncles.
They threw in two handgrenades and started shooting at us.”
The adults tried to protect the children with their bodies, but were slain.
When Iman dared to look, she saw that “everyone was dead around me except
for my brother and my uncle”.
Both were injured and Iman was hurt in the leg. The rest of the family, including
her brother, Abdullah, 4, died.
Iman fled next-door, where her other grandfather Yunis lived, only to find
everybody there appeared to have been killed too. There was in fact one survivor,
Safa Yunis Salim, 12.
“My daddy tried to open the door to let the Americans in, but he was
immediately shot in the head and body,” Safa said.
“I managed to hide under the body of my brother Mohammed. His blood covered
me and protected me as I pretended to be dead.” They also killed her four
sisters including Aysha, 4, and Zainab, 2.
Five hours passed before Safa managed to escape. “I was the only one
who survived. I watched them kill my entire family. I am all alone now,”
she said, crying.
When the marines stormed the third house they changed tactics. The men were
separated from the women and stuffed into a large cupboard, according to Yussef
Ayed Ahmad, the brother of the dead men, who lived next-door.
“They placed my four brothers into the wardrobe and proceeded to shoot
them as they were inside,” he said. “My mother and sister told me
later how they died.”
The marines found an AK 47 in the house — the only gun found in all three
homes — but there is no evidence it was fired.
The marines’ cover story quickly began to unravel. In March, Time magazine
revealed the existence of a video shot the day after the attack by an Iraqi
student journalist. It showed the victims still in their nightclothes, a trail
of blood and shrapnel and bullet marks on the walls.
At the local morgue Waleed al Obeidi, who received the corpses 24 hours after
the killings, also disputed the marines’ account. “Two bodies were
completely charred,” he said. “The others, including women and children,
had all been shot at close range.”
According to some reports, American warplanes dropped 500lb bombs on the houses.
The marines paid $2,500 (£1,350) in compensation for each of the 15 victims
who were shot in their homes. They refused to pay for the four brothers and
five occupants of the taxi, claiming they were insurgents. Officials now say
those men were innocent.
General Michael Hagee, the US Marine Corps commander, flew to Baghdad last
week to prepare his troops for the grim findings of the investigation. Many
marines had witnessed the deaths of friends, he said. “The effects of
these events can be numbing. There is the risk of becoming indifferent to the
loss of a human life, as well as bringing dishonour upon ourselves.”
The conclusions are likely to provoke widespread revulsion.
President George W Bush said last week that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was one
of his greatest regrets about the Iraq war. If the photographs from Haditha
surface, they could provide a set of images that would be every bit as shocking.