Haditha alleged massacre video released to Reuters

[tocqueville]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060321/wl_nm/iraq_usa_haditha_dc

By Ali al-Mashhadani
1 hour, 17 minutes ago

HADITHA, Iraq (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.

[Hissyspit]

1. k & r

[suffragette]

2. Wonder how much the video had to do with their changing

their statement:

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.


Hard to maintain the lie that these were insurgents, when one is three years old. Or to say they died by a roadside bomb when the video shows the bullet holes.

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.

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