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Iraq witnesses tell of killings by marinesIHT, NYT published yesterday. |
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Hiba Abdullah survived the killings by U.S. troops in Haditha last Nov. 19, but she said seven others inside her father-in-law's home did not.
She said U.S. troops shot and killed her husband, Rashid Abdul Hamid, with gunshots to the head and shoulder. They killed her father-in-law, Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali, a 77-year-old in a wheelchair, shooting him in the chest and abdomen, she said.
Her sister-in-law, Asma, "collapsed when her husband was killed in front of her eyes," Abdullah said. As Asma fell, she dropped her 3-month-old infant. Abdullah said she picked up the baby girl and sprinted out of the house, and when she returned, Asma was dead.
Four people who survived the killings in Haditha, including some who had never spoken publicly, described the killings to an Iraqi writer and historian who was recruited by The New York Times to travel to Haditha and interview survivors and witnesses of what military and Pentagon officials have said appear to be unjustified killings of 24 Iraqis.
Some in Congress fear that the killings could do greater harm to the image of the U.S. military around the world than the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
Military officials declined on Sunday to comment on details of the killings described by survivors. "The investigations are ongoing, therefore any comment at this time would be inappropriate and could undermine the investigatory and possible legal process," said Lieutenant Colonel Sean Gibson, a U.S. Marine spokesman.
The four survivors' accounts could not be independently corroborated, and it was unclear in some cases whether they actually saw the killings.
But much of what they said was consistent with broad outlines of the events of that day provided by military and government officials who have been briefed on the military's investigations into the killings, which the officials have said is likely to lead to charges that may include murder and a cover-up of what really happened.
The name of the Iraqi who conducted the interviews for The New York Times is being withheld for his own safety, because insurgents often target any Iraqis deemed to be collaborators.
Haditha, a sandswept farming village flecked with date palms on the upper Euphrates River, is in one of Iraq's most dangerous areas, ridden with insurgents in the heart of Sunni-dominated Anbar Province.
Three months earlier, 20 marines from a different unit were killed around Haditha over a three-day span. Fourteen were slain by a bomb that destroyed their troop carrier. Six others, all snipers, were ambushed and killed on a foot patrol.
Insurgents appeared to later rejoice and boast about the sniper ambush, releasing a video over the Internet that appeared to show both the attack and the mangled and burned body of a dead American serviceman.
Haditha is under the control of insurgents that include Tawhid and Jihad, a name that has been used by the terrorist organization of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said Miysar al-Dulaimi, a human rights lawyer who has relatives in Haditha and who returned there two days after the killings and spoke to witnesses and neighbors.
Dulaimi said that outside of their bases, the Americans control almost nothing.
"People are so scared," he said. "They have lost confidence in the Americans. If the Americans show up in the neighborhood, the insurgents will come and take away people they accuse of being stooges of the Americans."
But just over six months ago, 24 people in the Subhani district of Haditha faced a different death, witnesses and survivors say.
The killings began after 7:15 a.m., as the neighborhood was stirring awake, when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb in Subhani that killed Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas of El Paso, Texas, as his patrol drove through the area.
According to one U.S. defense official, most of the subsequent killings are believed to have been committed by a handful of marines led by a staff sergeant who was their squad leader, although other marines are also under investigation.
In the home that Abdullah escaped from, she said, U.S. troops also shot in the chest and killed a 4-year-old nephew named Abdullah Walid.
She said her mother-in-law, Khumaysa Tuma Ali, 66, died after being shot in the back. Two brothers-in-law, Jahid Abdul Hamid Hassan and Walid Abdul Hamid Hassan, were also killed, she said.
She said she saw U.S. troops kick her family members and that one American shouted in the face of one relative before he was killed.
In addition to Abdullah and Asma's baby, two others survived. One, 9-year- old Iman Walid Abdul Hamid, said she ran quickly, still clad in her pajamas, to hide under the bed covers with her younger brother, Abdul Rahman Walid Abdul Hamid, when she saw what was happening.
"My mother was screaming and crying because she was shot and she fell on the ground bleeding in front of the bedroom door, and no one helped her," Iman said. "We were scared and could not move for two hours. I tried to hide under the bed," she said.
But both children were hit by shrapnel.
Abdullah assumed that the two children had died, but she said they were later found at a local hospital.
The U.S. defense official, who described information collected during the investigation, also said that one of the victims was an elderly man killed in his wheelchair. He appeared to have been holding a Koran, according to the official.
Some victims had single gunshot wounds to the head, and at least one home where people were shot and killed had no bullet marks on the walls, inconsistent with a clearing operation that would typically leave bullet holes, the official added.
Senator John Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, pledged on Sunday to hold hearings on the Haditha killings as soon as the military investigation was concluded.
"I'll do exactly what we did with Abu Ghraib," he said on ABC television, referring to hearings. He added that there were serious questions of "what was the immediate reaction of the senior officers in the Marine Corps."
In all, 19 people were killed in three separate homes in Haditha, and five were killed after they approached the scene in a taxi, survivors and people in the neighborhood said.
Abdullah said that after the killings in her father-in-law's home, the U.S. troops moved to the house of a neighbor, Younis Salim Nisaif. She said he was killed by gunshots to his abdomen and chest.
His wife, Aida, who was recovering from surgery, was shot in her neck and also died, as did her sister, Huda.
Five children were also killed at that home, shot in their abdomen, head, or chest, she said.
There was one survivor, Safa Younis Salim, 13, who in an interview said she lived by faking her death.
"I pretended that I was dead when my brother's body fell on me and he was bleeding like a faucet," she said.
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