Military probes killing of Iraqi family

By Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The U.S. military said on Tuesday it
was investigating Iraqi police allegations that its soldiers
shot dead a family of 11 in their home last week.

Soldiers said they killed four people, including a
militant.

The probe comes a day after a magazine published
allegations that U.S. Marines killed 15 civilians in another
town last year. A criminal inquiry into those deaths was
launched last week.

Time magazine ran accounts by townspeople saying troops
went on a rampage after a Marine was killed by a roadside bomb
in Haditha, west of Baghdad, in November. The witnesses
rejected an original U.S. account that the 15 also died in the
bomb blast.

“I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest
and then in the head,” one child said. “Then they killed my
granny.”

In one of their biggest attacks on Iraqi forces, insurgents
stormed the police headquarters and another official building
in the town of Miqdadiya, 80 km (50 miles) northeast of
Baghdad, on Tuesday, killing at least 22 people, mostly
policemen.

Ten suspected Sunni Arab insurgents were also killed, but
the attackers freed 33 prisoners, an Interior Ministry source
said, adding that 15 police and nine civilians had been killed.

A police source put the death toll at 18 police, four
civilians and one gunman.

The governor of Diyala province, which has a volatile
ethnic and sectarian mix and has seen many al Qaeda attacks in
recent months, had the police chief and other officers
arrested.

He suspected them of complicity in the dawn raid, which
police said involved about 100 fighters and lasted an hour.

Forces scrambling to the aid of the besieged units were
also targeted. Two policemen were killed when a roadside bomb
blasted their patrol as it raced from nearby Baquba. In a
separate bombing in that city, two other policemen were killed.

PILGRIMS

The violence came as Shi’ite pilgrims, estimated by local
officials to number over two million, concluded the rites of
Arbain in the holy city of Kerbala and began to head for home.

The two-day mourning ceremony passed off with little
incident, guarded by thousands of Iraqi police and troops.

With Iraq teetering on the brink of all-out sectarian civil
war after the bombing of a Shi’ite shrine in Samarra a month
ago, U.S. and Iraqi forces have been on high alert.

Holidays for Arbain and the Kurdish spring festival of
Nowruz have held up negotiations on a national unity government
that Iraqi and U.S. leaders say is vital to defuse the crisis.

Marking the third anniversary on Monday of the invasion of
Iraq on March 20, 2003, President George W. Bush vowed not to
abandon Iraq and tried to counter fears among Americans and
Iraqis that the communal violence was spiraling into civil war.

“In the face of continued reports about killings and
reprisals, I understand how some Americans have had their
confidence shaken,” he said.

The chaos in Iraq is a major factor in Bush’s plunging poll
ratings, the lowest of his presidency.

“Three years ago, we did not expect things to get this
bad,” former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi told Reuters on
Tuesday, saying a strong national unity government was
imperative.

Allawi, seen in Washington as a tough, pro-U.S., secular
figure, is widely tipped to take on a powerful new role as head
of a Security Council that will oversee all major issues.

Political sources say agreement on the council could
provide a way around the deadlock on forming the cabinet
itself.

INVESTIGATIONS

The U.S. military said on Tuesday it was investigating the
discrepancies between police and U.S. army accounts of an
incident in the town of Ishaqi, north of Baghdad, on Wednesday.

Police accused U.S. troops of shooting dead 11 people,
including five children, while the military said only four
people were killed in all. “Because of that discrepancy, we
have opened an investigation,” said Lieutenant Colonel Barry
Johnson, a senior U.S. spokesman in Baghdad.

Local police Colonel Farouq Hussein said autopsies had
found that all the victims were shot in the head. “It’s a clear
and perfect crime without any doubt,” he added.

Accusations that U.S. soldiers often kill civilians and
that little disciplinary action has resulted in the few cases
investigated have fueled Iraqi anger since the invasion.

Like Ishaqi, near Samarra, Haditha in western Anbar
province is in an area that has seen much Sunni Arab insurgent
activity.

U.S. military officials confirmed that an account from U.S.
Marines in November of 15 civilians being killed by a roadside
bomb in Haditha was wrong and that the civilians were shot.

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

(Additional reporting by Michael Georgy, Mariam Karouny,
Aseel Kami and Ross Colvin in Baghdad and Sami al-Jumaili in
Kerbala)