IRAQ: CLAIMS OF ATROCITIES BY CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS MOUNT

Hala Jaber and Tony Allen-Mills, Sunday Times, 3/26/06http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2103695,00.htmlTHE villagers of Abu Sifa near the Iraqi town of Balad had become used to the sound of explosions at night as American forces searched the area for suspected insurgents. But one night two weeks ago Issa Harat Khalaf heard a different sound that chilled him to the bone.Khalaf, a 33-year-old security officer guarding oil pipelines, saw a US helicopter land near his home. American soldiers stormed out of the Chinook and advanced on a house owned by Khalaf's brother Fayez, firing as they went.Khalaf ran from his own house and hid in a nearby grove of trees. He saw the soldiers enter his brother's home and then heard the sound of women and children screaming."Then there was a lot of machinegun fire," he said last week. After that there was the most frightening sound of all - silence, followed by explosions as the soldiers left the house.Once the troops were gone, Khalaf and his fellow villagers began a frantic search through the ruins of his brother's home. Abu Sifa was about to join a lengthening list of Iraqi communities claiming to have suffered from American atrocities.According to Iraqi police, 11 bodies were pulled from the wreckage of the house, among them four women and five children aged between six months and five years. An official police report obtained by a US reporter for Knight Ridder newspapers said: "The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people."The Abu Sifa deaths on March 15 were first reported last weekend on the day that Time magazine published the results of a 10-week investigation into an incident last November when US marines killed 15 civilians in their homes in the western Iraqi town of Haditha.The two incidents are being investigated by US authorities, but persistent eyewitness accounts of rampaging attacks by American troops are fuelling human rights activists' concerns that Pentagon commanders are failing to curb military excesses in Iraq. (MORE)SEE ALSO:DID AMERICAN MARINES MURDER 23 IRAQI CIVILIANS? - TOP Raymond Whitaker, Independent, 3/26/06http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article353678.eceUS military investigators are examining allegations that Marines shot unarmed Iraqis, then claimed they were "enemy fighters", The Independent on Sunday has learned. In the same incident, eyewitnesses say, one man bled to death over a period of hours as soldiers ignored his pleas for help. (MORE)