Iraqi residents say bodies in video from US raid

By Ali al-Mashhadani

03/24/06 "Reuters" -- -- A video of civilians who may have been killed by U.S. Marines in an Iraqi town in November showed residents describing a rampage by U.S. soldiers that left a trail of bullet-riddled bodies and destruction.

A copy of the video, given to Reuters by Iraq's Hammurabi Organization for Monitoring Human Rights and Democracy, showed corpses lined up at the Haditha morgue. The chief doctor at Haditha's hospital, Waleed al-Obaidi, said the victims had bullet wounds in the head and chest.

Most residents interviewed by Reuters in Haditha on Tuesday echoed accusations by residents in the video that U.S. Marines attacked houses after their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb.

They said the Marines opened fire on houses. "I saw a soldier standing outside a house and he opened fire on the house," said one resident, who did not want to be identified.

Time magazine published allegations on Monday that U.S. Marines killed civilians in Haditha after one of their comrades was killed by a roadside bomb. It published detailed accounts by people in the town, west of Baghdad.

A criminal inquiry into those deaths was launched last week. Time said the main question facing the probe was whether the "Marines killing of 15 non-combatants was an act of legitimate self-defense or negligent homicide."

Haditha, 200 km (125 miles) northwest of Baghdad, is in Anbar province, an area that has seen much activity by Sunni Arab insurgents whose campaign to topple the Iraqi government has killed thousands of U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians.

On November 20, U.S. Marines spokesman Captain Jeffrey Pool issued a statement saying that, on the previous day, a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine. In a later gunbattle, U.S. and Iraqi troops had killed eight insurgents, he added.

U.S. military officials have since confirmed to Reuters that that version of the events of November 19 was wrong and that the 15 civilians were not killed by the blast but were shot dead.

TRUCK PILED WITH CORPSES

Time magazine said this week the video of the corpses it provided to the military in January had prompted the revision.

Accusations that American soldiers often kill innocent people have fueled anger at the occupation among Iraqis over the past three years.

The video given to Reuters shows bodies piled in the back of a white pickup truck outside the morgue. Among them was a girl who appeared to be about three years old.

One man wept and leaned against a wall as he identified a relative and other residents inspected bodies in the morgue. One man's face had been torn apart by bullets, while a blackened corpse was missing legs and forearms.

The video also showed houses with bullet holes in the walls, pieces of human flesh, pools of blood and clothes and pots scattered across floors.

In one home, a young boy wept as he sat beside a corpse and said: "My father. My father."

Some residents blamed U.S. President George W. Bush, former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and President Jalal Talabani. "Is this the democracy Allawi, Talabani and Bush are talking about?" one resident asked.

Abdel Rahman al-Mashhadani, head of Hammurabi, said U.S. Marines had killed 15 people in Haditha after the roadside bomb attack. The group's Haditha branch said it got the video from a local man.

Mashhadani said he had brought the case to the attention of the United Nations office in Baghdad. "These violations of human rights happen every day in Iraq," he told Reuters.

On Tuesday, residents of Haditha had similar accounts to those on the video.

"This room had a family of eight inside, children and their father and mother," one man said of his relatives who were killed in their home. Another resident confirmed his account, saying one of the children was three years old.

"They are all gone," he said.

Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited.