A young boy riding a bicycle looks across at a
newly-erected warning sign put up Wednesday, May 31, 2006 on a road around
100 metres from the maternity hospital which Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, 35, a
pregnant woman and her 57-year-old cousin Saliha Mohammed Hassan, were
driving to for Jassim to give birth when they were killed in Samarra, Iraq
Tuesday, May 30, 2006. US forces apparently shot to death two Iraqi women,
one of them pregnant, when they fired at a vehicle that failed to stop at
an observation post in the town, Iraqi officials and relatives said.
[AP] |
US forces killed two Iraqi women - one of them about to give
birth - when the troops shot at a car that failed to stop at an observation
post in a city north of Baghdad, Iraqi officials and relatives said Wednesday.
Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, 35, was being raced to the maternity hospital in Samarra
by her brother when the shooting occurred Tuesday.
Jassim, the mother of two children, and her
57-year-old cousin, Saliha Mohammed Hassan, were killed by the US forces,
according to police Capt. Laith Mohammed and witnesses.
The US military said coalition troops fired at a car after it entered a
clearly marked prohibited area near an observation post but failed to stop
despite repeated visual and auditory warnings.
"Shots were fired to disable the vehicle," the military said in a statement
e-mailed to The Associated Press. "Coalition forces later received reports from
Iraqi police that two women had died from gunshot wounds ... and one of the
females may have been pregnant."
Jassim's brother, who was wounded by broken glass, said he did not see any
warnings as he sped his sister to the hospital. Her husband was waiting for her
there.
"I was driving my car at full speed because I did not see any sign or warning
from the Americans. It was not until they shot the two bullets that killed my
sister and cousin that I stopped," he said. "God take revenge on the Americans
and those who brought them here. They have no regard for our lives."
He said doctors tried but failed to save the baby after his sister was
brought to the hospital.
The shooting deaths occurred in the wake of an investigation into allegations
that US Marines killed unarmed civilians in the western city of Haditha.
The US military said the incident in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, was
being investigated. The city is in the heart of the so-called Sunni Triangle and
has in the past seen heavy insurgent activity.
"The loss of life is regrettable and coalition forces go to great lengths to
prevent them," the military said.
The women's bodies were wrapped in sheets and lying on stretchers outside the
Samarra General Hospital before being taken to the morgue, while residents
pointed to bullet holes on the windshield of a car and a pool of blood on the
seat.
Khalid Nisaif Jassim, the pregnant woman's brother, said American forces had
blocked off the side road only two weeks ago and news about the observation post
had been slow to filter out to rural areas.
He said the killings, like those in Haditha, were examples of random killings
faced by Iraqis every day.
The killings at Haditha, a city that has been plagued by insurgents, came
after a bomb rocked a military convoy on Nov. 19, killing a Marine. Rep. John
Murtha (news, bio, voting record), D-Pa., a decorated war veteran who has been
briefed by military officials, has said Marines shot and killed unarmed
civilians in a taxi at the scene and went into two homes and shot others.
Military investigators have evidence that points toward unprovoked murders by
Marines, a senior defense official said last week.
In his first public comments on the incident, President Bush said he was
troubled by the allegations, and that, "If in fact laws were broken, there will
be punishment."
Former Iraqi Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi told the BBC that the
allegations have "created a feeling of great shock and sadness and I believe
that if what is alleged is true - and I have no reason to believe it's
not - then I think something very drastic has to be done."
"There must be a level of discipline imposed on the American troops and
change of mentality which seems to think that Iraqi lives are expendable," said
Pachachi, a member of parliament.
If confirmed as unjustified killings, the episode could be the most serious
case of criminal misconduct by US troops during three years of combat in Iraq.
Until now the most infamous occurrence was the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse
involving Army soldiers, which came to light in April 2004 and which Bush said
he considered to be the worst U.S. mistake of the entire war.
Once the military investigation is completed, perhaps in June, it will be up
to a senior Marine commander in Iraq to decide whether to press charges of
murder or other violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The incident has sparked two investigations - one into the deadly
encounter itself and another into whether it was the subject of a cover-up. The
Marine Corps had initially attributed 15 civilian deaths to the car bombing and
a firefight with insurgents, eight of whom the Marines reported had been killed.
"People in Samarra are very angry with the Americans not only because of
Haditha case but because the Americans kill people randomly specially recently,"
Khalid Nisaif Jassim said.