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03/28/2006:

"Iraq minister says US, Iraqi troops killed 37"

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's security minister, a Shi'ite political ally of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, accused U.S. and Iraqi troops on Monday of killing 37 unarmed people in an attack on a mosque complex a day earlier.

"At evening prayers, American soldiers accompanied by Iraqi troops raided the Mustafa mosque and killed 37 people," Abd al-Karim al-Enzi, minister of state for national security, said.

"They were all unarmed. Nobody fired a single shot at them (the troops). They went in, tied up the people and shot them all. They did not leave any wounded behind," he told Reuters.

Shi'ite politicians had earlier said 20 people were killed at the mosque. The U.S. military's account of Sunday evening's incident said Iraqi special forces with U.S. advisers killed 16 "insurgents", arrested 15 people and freed an Iraqi hostage. The military denied entering any mosque.
reuters.com


Baghdad governor says suspends cooperation with US
BAGHDAD, March 27 (Reuters) - Baghdad provincial governor Hussein al-Tahan said on Monday he would suspend all cooperation with U.S. forces until an independent investigation is launched into the killing of 20 Shi'ites in a mosque.

"Today we decided to stop all political and service cooperation with the U.S. forces until a legal committee is formed to investigate this incident," he told reporters, adding that the inquiry panel should include the U.S. embassy and the Iraqi defence ministry but not the U.S. military.


2 weeks ago:Iraqis killed by US troops ‘on rampage’
Claims of atrocities by soldiers mount

THE villagers of Abu Sifa near the Iraqi town of Balad had become used to the sound of explosions at night as American forces searched the area for suspected insurgents. But one night two weeks ago Issa Harat Khalaf heard a different sound that chilled him to the bone.
Khalaf, a 33-year-old security officer guarding oil pipelines, saw a US helicopter land near his home. American soldiers stormed out of the Chinook and advanced on a house owned by Khalaf’s brother Fayez, firing as they went.

Khalaf ran from his own house and hid in a nearby grove of trees. He saw the soldiers enter his brother’s home and then heard the sound of women and children screaming.

“Then there was a lot of machinegun fire,” he said last week. After that there was the most frightening sound of all — silence, followed by explosions as the soldiers left the house.

Once the troops were gone, Khalaf and his fellow villagers began a frantic search through the ruins of his brother’s home. Abu Sifa was about to join a lengthening list of Iraqi communities claiming to have suffered from American atrocities.

According to Iraqi police, 11 bodies were pulled from the wreckage of the house, among them four women and five children aged between six months and five years. An official police report obtained by a US reporter for Knight Ridder newspapers said: “The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people.”

The Abu Sifa deaths on March 15 were first reported last weekend on the day that Time magazine published the results of a 10-week investigation into an incident last November when US marines killed 15 civilians in their homes in the western Iraqi town of Haditha.


Did American Marines murder 23 Iraqi civilians?
US military investigators are examining allegations that Marines shot unarmed Iraqis, then claimed they were "enemy fighters", The Independent on Sunday has learned. In the same incident, eyewitnesses say, one man bled to death over a period of hours as soldiers ignored his pleas for help.

American military officials in Iraq have already admitted that 15 civilians who died in the incident in the western town of Haditha last November were killed by Marines, and not by a roadside bomb, as had previously been claimed. The only victim of the remotely triggered bomb, it is now conceded, was a 20-year-old Marine, Lance-Corporal Miguel Terrazas, from El Paso, Texas.

An inquiry has been launched by the US Navy's Criminal Investigation Service after the military was presented with evidence that the 15 civilians, including seven women and three children still in their nightclothes, had been killed in their homes in the wake of the bombing. If it is proved that they died in a rampage by the Marines, and not as a result of "collateral damage", it would rank as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by US armed forces since the invasion three years ago.


40 recruits killed at Iraq base
A suicide bomber attacked an Iraqi army recruiting centre today in northern Iraq, killing at least 40 people and wounding 30 others, the Iraqi military said.
The bomber struck shortly after midday at the recruiting centre in front of a joint US-Iraqi military base between Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, and the ancient city of Tal Afar.

All the victims were believed to all be Iraqis; the US military said no American troops were hurt in the bombing, which was around 18 miles east of Tal Afar.