Photos confirm US air raid killed Iraqi children

Iraqi officials on Dec. 8 contradicted US claims that 20 al-Qaida militants had died in a coordinated US air and ground assault, saying instead that 17 civilians had been killed. The country's Sunni leaders condemned the raid, calling it a massacre. According to a US military statement, the raid was launched after troops searched buildings in the town of Ashaqi, near the Thar Thar lake, north-west of Baghdad. A spokesperson said the soldiers were attacked and returned fire, killing two militants, before calling in air support to combat continuing resistance. The military said the air attack killed a further 18 fighters, including two women. "Al-Qaida in Iraq has both men and women supporting and facilitating their operations, unfortunately," a military statement said. The spokesperson added that troops had uncovered caches of weapons including AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. Intelligence reports had indicated that "associates with links to al-Qaida in Iraq networks" were operating in the area. However, police and officials in Ishaqi said the bodies of 17 civilians, including six women and five children, were found in the rubble of two homes. Relatives showed the children's bodies to journalists. Aljazeera obtained exclusive footage that confirms children were among the victims of the US air raid. The footage showed the bodies of men, women and children wrapped in blankets after they had been pulled from the rubble. In Aljazeera's pictures angry villagers had gathered around the bodies, several of which were so badly charred that their faces were unrecognizable. Local residents said that one entire family had been killed. Abdullah Hussain Jabbara, deputy governor of Salah al-Din governorate, told Aljazeera: "Residents of the two houses [which were bombed] have nothing to do with the al-Qaida network. All the people killed are members of the same family." Jabbara said an investigation into the incident would be carried out. "But what is the use of opening an investigation?" he asked. "The occupation still exists and Iraqi citizens are the victims." Only a handful of complaints involving civilian deaths in Iraq have led to criminal investigations by the US military. The Agence France Presse (AFP) news agency said it passed its own photographs of the dead children to Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver, a US military spokesperson, who said: "I see nothing in the photos that indicates those children were in the houses that our forces received fire from and subsequently destroyed with the air strike." "The Americans have done this before, but they always deny it," Amer Alwan, the mayor of Ishaqi, told Reuters. "I want the world to know what's happening here." He also told AFP: "This is the third crime done by Americans in this area of Ishaqi. All the casualties were innocent women and children, and everything they said about them being part of al-Qaida is a lie." Hundreds of chanting residents of Jalameda marched through Ishaqi on Dec. 9 firing shots and carrying banners that read: "The people of Ishaqi condemn the mass killing by the occupation forces." "We ask the Americans to be merciful. They kill civilians alleging they are terrorists. Ishaqi is a catastrophe," said Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the biggest Sunni political bloc in parliament. In March, Iraqis accused US forces of tying up and shooting 11 people in al-Ishaqi, including four women and five children, while US forces maintained it had only killed two women and a child in an air strike. The BBC later broadcast video footage from the scene showing people with gunshot wounds. The soldiers involved in the case, however, were cleared of all misconduct.