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Four marines singled out in Iraq massacre investigation
A four-man team of United States Marines led the killing rampage in the Iraqi town of Haditha which resulted in the deaths of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians, military investigators believe. The troops went from house to house shooting their occupants after a roadside bomb killed one of their comrades, an internal US military report, which may be completed as early as this week, is expected to conclude. Some of the victims were killed, execution style, by shots to the head.Shock at the full extent of the killing, reported by The Sunday Telegraph last weekend, has been compounded by photographs taken by a marine intelligence team which show bullet wounds to the upper bodies of the victims, who included several women and six children, some shot in the head and some in the back. One US government official said the pictures showed that marines from Camp Pendleton "suffered a total breakdown in morality and leadership, with tragic results", according to yesterday's Los Angeles Times. The sergeant who led the unit is suspected of filing a false report that downplayed the number of casualties and claimed they were killed by an insurgent's bomb. He also allegedly said that marines burst into homes in pursuit of locals firing at them. The latest developments in the military investigation are fuelling fears in the Pentagon and White House that the US is facing a war crimes atrocity with chilling echoes of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, when marines killed 500 villagers in a retaliation attack. Posted by: Fred 2006-05-28 |
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