WikiLeaks: Iraqi Children in U.S. Raid Shot in Head, U.N. says
« A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at
least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a
5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence,
during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of
Ishaqi.
The unclassified
cable, which was posted on WikiLeaks’ website last week, contained
questions from a United Nations investigator about the incident, which
had angered local Iraqi officials, who demanded some kind of action from
their government. U.S. officials denied at the time that anything
inappropriate had occurred.
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But Philip Alston, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial,
summary or arbitrary executions, said in a communication to American
officials dated 12 days after the March 15, 2006, incident that
autopsies performed in the Iraqi city of Tikrit showed that all the dead
had been handcuffed and shot in the head. Among the dead were four
women and five children. The children were all 5 years old or younger.
« The Pentagon didn’t respond to a request for comment. At the time,
American military officials in Iraq said the accounts of townspeople who
witnessed the events were highly unlikely to be true, and they later
said the incident didn’t warrant further investigation. Military
officials also refused to reveal which units might have been involved in
the incident.
« After the firefight ended, Alston wrote, the
“troops entered the house, handcuffed all residents and executed all of
them. After the initial MNF intervention, a U.S. air raid ensued that
destroyed the house.” The initials refer to the official name of the
military coalition, the Multi-National Force.
Alston said “Iraqi
TV stations broadcast from the scene and showed bodies of the victims
(i.e. five children and four women) in the morgue of Tikrit. Autopsies
carries (sic) out at the Tikrit Hospital’s morgue revealed that all
corpses were shot in the head and handcuffed.” »
PUBLISHED ON AUGUST 31, 2011
UPDATED ON APRIL 12, 2019
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