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Troops Kill Family

Troops Kill Family

April 8, 2008

US troops kill Iraqi family in their beds
US SOLDIERS killed an Iraqi couple and their son as they lay sleeping in their beds early yesterday morning, injuring their two daughters in the process, one of whom later died in hospital.

Troops Kill Family

The troops stormed a tiny one-room house in the village of Adwar about 10 miles south of Tikrit and opened fire. The US military said that the soldiers had killed “two suspected members of a terrorist cell” after they were fired on. It is the second time in as many days that the US military has owned up to involve­ment in the deaths of Iraqi civilians.

On Monday, the military reported that it had accidentally killed nine Iraqi civilians, including a child, in an air strike. In both cases, the military acknowledged involvement in the killings only in response to media inquiries. It said that the raid in Adwar had been based on intelligence gleaned from an in­formant and that the killings remained un­der investigation. The victims’ cousin Kareem Talea Hamad, who watched the killings from his house across the street, reported that the US soldiers had opened fire immediately on entering the house, killing its unarmed residents — father Ali Hamad Shihab, his wife Naeimah Ali Su-laiman and their son Diaa Ali, who was a member of a US-allied Awakening Council.

Two daughters were wounded and taken to hospital, but one died hours later. A surviving daughter, Nawal Ali, said that she had been inside the house at the time of the raid and that an Iraqi interpreter working for US forces had tried to stop the soldiers from killing her parents. Ms Ali credited the interpreter with sav­ing the lives of two of her younger siblings, Hamzah and Asmaa. new Iraqi flag bereft of the three green stars of the Ba’ath Party and former president Saddam Hussein’s handwriting was hoisted over the Iraqi cabinet building in Baghdad yesterday. Earlier this month, Iraq’s parliament vot­ed to remove the stars, which represented the three objectives of the Ba’ath Party — unity, freedom and socialism.

© 2003 Freedom Lite (Michael Culver)

Freedom Lite