Baghdad: A military probe into allegations that US troops intentionally killed civilians in Ishaqi, a village north of Baghdad, has cleared them of misconduct, the US said, even though it acknowledged the deaths of up to 13 Iraqis in the March raid.
Meanwhile, a lawyer representing families of some of the two dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians allegedly killed by US Marines in the western town of Haditha on November 19 said yesterday that three or four Marines carried out the shootings while 20 more waited outside the homes.
"The investigation of the March 15 attack in Ishaqi concluded that the US troops followed normal procedures in raising the level of force as they came under attack upon approaching a building where they believed an al-Qaida terrorist was hiding," said Major General William Caldwell, a US military spokesman.
Caldwell also acknowledged there were "possibly up to nine collateral deaths" in addition to the four Iraqi deaths that the military announced at the time of the raid.
The results of the investigation were released after questions were raised about the original US report as television stations aired AP Television News footage of a row of dead children in the aftermath of the raid.
The probe was part of US investigations into possible misconduct by American troops in at least three separate areas of Iraq. Besides Haditha and Ishaqi, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman could face murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges in the April shooting death of an Iraqi man west of Baghdad.
The military said on Friday it will cooperate with the Iraqi government in its own investigation of Haditha and other incidents of alleged wrongdoing by US troops.
Campbell's pledge came a day after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki upbraided the US military over Haditha, which he called "a horrible crime" and accused the troops of habitually attacking unarmed civilians.
On Friday, White House press secretary Tony Snow said al-Maliki had told US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad that he had been misquoted.
Defence Secretary Donald H Rumsfeld defended the training and conduct of US troops and said incidents such as the alleged massacre of Iraqi civilians at Haditha should not happen.
In one of the homes, Marines ordered four brothers inside a closet and shot them dead, said the Haditha lawyer, Khaled Salem Rsayef.
Rsayef said he himself lost several relatives in the alleged massacre, including a sister and her husband, an aunt, an uncle and several cousins.
Despite the Iraqi government's insistence of cooperation between the US and Iraqi investigations, the Rsayefs said they and other victims' families refused the request several months ago to exhume the bodies.
The New York Times, in a story in today's editions posted on its Web site, quoted a senior Marine officer as saying that commanders learned within two days that civilians in Haditha were killed by gunfire and not a roadside bomb.
The Haditha attack came four months before the nighttime raid in the village of Ishaqi, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Baghdad.
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