Seven civilians killed at US checkpoint
Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles Owens says the shooting occurred at a checkpoint at Najaf, 150 kilometres south of Baghdad.
He says the victims, women and children, were in a vehicle which failed to stop despite repeated warning shots fired by US troops.
Four other people in the vehicle escaped unharmed.
"As a last resort, they fired into the passenger compartment of the vehicle," Lt Cdr Owens said at US Central Command's forward planning base.
"When soldiers opened the vehicle they found 13 women and children inside. Seven of the occupants were dead, two were wounded and four were unharmed."
Lt Cdr Owens says the military has opened an investigation into the incident and is trying to find out if any of the car's occupants were hurt before the troops opened fire.
This sort of thing seriously pisses me off. I find nowt amusing about it at all. A "vehicle which failed to stop despite repeated warning shots fired by US troops". Bugger me! Is it the slightest bit possible that they were shit scared and thought that they were under attack? Given the number of civilians already "pacified" you couldn't blame them and despite the aspirations of the Primate it is still their fucking country for Godsake!
What really shits me is the weasel clause statement, "the military has opened an investigation into the incident and is trying to find out if any of the car's occupants were hurt before the troops opened fire"
Right! Fatima had a blistered toe, Ahmed had a splinter in his thumb and Wassim had a skinned knee. "See! We couldn't have killed them! Probably died of gangrene or septicaemia." Bullshit, killed by septics.
Typical it seems ... umpteen killed in a market place and it's "let's not discount the possibility that it was a misguided Iraq missile". Weasel, weasel, weasel. Seems to me that the Amerkins have a mortgage on inflicting death by misguided missiles if the tally of dead Brits is anything to go by.
Truly putrid stuff!
This sort of thing SO brings back memories of living through the Vietnam fiasco. Day after day innocent women and children were killed by shit scared and paranoid soldiers because there was credible evidence that the villagers might have Sherman tanks hidden away in their babies' nappies.
I'm sure this dirty little adventure has its own My Lai massacre just waiting to happen ... or to be uncovered.
Meanwhile US Marines say they have shot dead an unarmed Iraqi who drove his pickup truck at speed towards a checkpoint they were manning outside the southern town of Shatra.
They riddled his white truck with bullets after it sped towards their roadblock on the main highway near Nasiriya, apparently oblivious to barbed wire strewn across the road.
His passenger was badly wounded.
Marines have told a correspondent at the scene the truck was not loaded and neither of the men was in uniform or armed.
"I thought it was a suicide bomb," said one of the servicemen who fired on the vehicle.
