Democratic murders

The U.S. army is investigating a new massacre at the hands of American troops in which more than 11 Iraqi civilians, including women and children, were murdered, the latest in a series of accusations of abuse and indiscriminate shootings that has damaged the U.S. image since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, BBC reported.

A spokesman for the U.S. army in Iraq told BBC that an investigation was under way into the killings in the Iraqi town of Ishaqi, some 100 km north of Baghdad, in March 15, 2006.

The British Broadcasting Corporation said it obtained a video that challenges the U.S. version of events. 

American officials said at the time that only four Iraqis died when U.S. forces clashed with rebels in Ishaqi after a tip-off that an Al-Qaeda member was visiting a house in the town, according to the BBC.  

U.S. officials also claimed that the house collapsed under heavy fire, killing one suspect, two women and a child.

But a report filed by the Iraqi police accused U.S. occupation forces of rounding up and deliberately shooting 11 civilians in the house, including four women and five children under school age, before blowing up the building.

The video footage, obtained by the BBC from a Sunni Muslim group opposed to the U.S. occupation, shows a number of dead adults and children, all covered in blood. One correspondent said it was clear they all died from gunshot wounds. 

BBC officials in Baghdad says the video has been cross-checked with other images taken at the time of the attack and is believed to be genuine.

The disturbing video comes amid investigations into the killings of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in the western town of Haditha last November, which has been denounced by some U.S. politicians as worse than the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.

On Friday, experts with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) said they want to exhume the bodies of several Haditha victims in search of evidence, according to the Washington Post. 

The forensic evidence was dismissed at first because the Haditha deaths were initially reported as caused by a roadside bombing and weren't treated as a crime, leading to accusations that U.S. troops covered up the killings. 

"There's plenty of shoulds, woulds, coulds to go around in this case. We have lots of disadvantage going in, but we will re-create the incident as best as we can," one unidentified official told the Post.

The independent NCIS investigation, the largest homicide inquiry since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, could lead to charges of murder, dereliction of duty and obstruction of justice.

The U.S. army said on Thursday that its troops in Iraq will have training into ethics. But correspondents say the move won't calm Iraqis' anger, as U.S. occupation forces have long been accused of deliberately targeting civilians.

On Friday, the brother of a pregnant Iraqi woman shot dead by U.S. forces at an army checkpoint said he would file a complaint against the U.S. military.

The pregnant woman was killed with her cousin while on their way to a maternity hospital in Samarra. The U.S. army claimed that their car failed to heed warnings to stop, but the brother, who was driving the car, said that there were no warnings.  

Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki slammed the U.S. army for what he described as "habitual attacks against civilians".

Maliki said violence against civilians was "common among many of the multinational forces", adding that foreign soldiers had "no respect for citizens, smashing civilian cars and killing on a suspicion or a hunch".

The Prime Minister's comments came as the government launched its own probe into the Haditha massacre.