Before Haditha, there was this

[greenman3610]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2103695,00.html


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.”

[NYC]

1. That was dated March 26, 2006.

...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...

[donbrunton]

9. Have you seen the movie on Abu Sifa?

This was on at the Huffington Post film festival.

http://isahaqi.chris-floyd.com

[NYC]

10. I haven't.

Thanks for the link.

Welcome to DU. :hi:

[Selatius]

2. I'd love to know the names of the officers responsible for this

They should be brought up on war crimes charges if it is true that they ordered the murder of women and children.

We should not murder children.

[Phrogman]

3. "They" should not murder anybody

[dysfunctional press]

14. WE should not.

like it or not- those soldiers are america's face to the rest of the world- and ultimately we do bear responsibility for their actions.

[Disturbed]

4. I suspect that more atrocities have been commited in Iraq

by US Troops than have been reported.

Remember the wedding party?

It seems that these incidents are quite rare and isolated because they are not tallied as a group of occurances. It takes a long period of time between the actuall occurances and the announcement of them. It also seems that more of these occurances will now be revealed as Iraqis are outraged by the ones that have recently seen the light of day.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

5. K&R!

[hootinholler]

6. And before Abu Sifa there was?

Fallujha? This seems to be an ongoing theme.

-Hoot

P.S. Yes I have no idear how to spell it.

[northamericancitizen]

7. Kick and recommended.

[Judi Lynn]

8. That's an excellent article. Thank you. Very, very sad. n/t

[malaise]

11. A good article but these people are

Iraqis not insurgents.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

12. kick

[beam me up scottie]

13. Did they offer to pay Khalaf $2500.00 for each victim, too?

Or did they claim that they didn't need to pay compensation because the victims were insurgents, like they did in Haditha?

The payoff is what gets to me.

How much is the life of your child worth to you?