US News
New massacre allegations against US troops
By DPA
Jun 2, 2006, 19:00 GMT

London - British broadcaster BBC aired purported videotape evidence of a massacre by US troops against Iraq civilians in March in a town outside Baghdad.

The US military said that four people were killed inadvertently in operations on March 15 in Ishaqi, about 100 kilometres north of the Iraqi capital.

Iraqi police have alleged that 11 people were deliberately shot to death by US troops in the incident.

The video, supplied to the network by a Sunni Muslim group opposed to the US-led occupation, shows the bodies of several adults and children who appear to be dead of gunshot wounds. The BBC said that it compared the video to other footage from Ishaqi and believed the film clip to be genuine.

The US claimed that the four dead - an al-Qaeda terrorist suspect with two women and a child - were inside a building that collapsed under heavy gunfire.

Iraqi police have alleged that 11 people inside the building - including four women and five children - were shot in cold blood before the building was demolished. It was not clear how the BBC video disproved the US claims of either a lower death toll or the circumstances of death.

The Ishaqi report comes amid a rising storm over an alleged massacre by US Marines in Haditha, where a reported 24 Iraqi civilians were killed in November 2005. The US military is conducting a criminal investigation of the Haditha incident and a possible coverup by participants, and the Iraqi government has opened its own probe.