Military Probes Marine Attack Criticized by Murtha

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WASHINGTON – Military officials said yesterday that a criminal investigation into a firefight in western Iraq that left at least 15 civilians dead is not complete, but they did not dispute a congressman’s charges that the attack by Marines was far worse than originally reported.

Officials in the Pentagon and at U.S. Central Command declined to say whether Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat of Pennsylvania, was correct in saying Marines killed innocent women and children “in cold blood” during the attacks last November. Mr. Murtha said American troops overreacted and that nearly twice as many people were killed than was first reported.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, in an interview yesterday on Fox News, said the department is investigating the matter and, “needless to say, we have to take seriously allegations of that type. And they’re under investigation, and they will then be handled in the normal order of things.”

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is conducting a criminal probe into the firefight in the western town of Haditha. About a dozen Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, are being investigated for war crimes.

On Wednesday, Mr. Murtha said the investigation will show that “in fact there was no firefight, there was no explosion that killed the civilians in a bus. There was no bus. There was no shrapnel, there was only bullet holes inside the house where the Marines had gone in.”

A videotape taken by an Iraqi shows the aftermath of the alleged Haditha attack: a blood-smeared bedroom floor and bits of what appear to be human flesh and bullet holes in the walls.

The video, obtained by Time magazine, was broadcast a day after Haditha residents told the Associated Press that American troops entered homes and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a Marine.


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