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thedrifter
06-08-06, 06:50 AM
Posted on Thu, Jun. 08, 2006
Witness in Haditha cites small group of Marines

By Hamza Hendawi
Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq – First, there was the early morning bomb that killed a U.S. Marine, followed by an “eerie silence.” Next, gunshots began to ring out through Haditha.

“You could tell that someone was killed by the gunfire, and then the wailing and screaming of women seconds after the Americans left the house,” said Thaer al-Hadithi, a human rights activist who watched and listened in fright from his family home.

With two U.S. military inquiries under way, al-Hadithi provided in an interview this week the most complete accounting yet of Iraqi accusations that U.S. Marines went on a revenge rampage in Haditha on Nov. 19.

His account, based on his observations that day and subsequent interviews with other townspeople, alleges that a small group of U.S. Marines killed up to two dozen Iraqi civilians in a house-to-house hunt that stretched over three hours. An estimated 50 Marines also in Haditha did not intervene, according to his investigation for the Hammurabi group, a Sunni Muslim organization.

The case, which came to public attention two months ago because of a video released by the Hammurabi group, is threatening to further weaken popular support for the Iraq war in the United States and has tarnished the military’s image in Iraq and around the world.

Al-Hadithi, 42, said he was visiting his family in Haditha in western Iraq for a Muslim holiday when he was awakened on the morning of Nov. 19 by the explosion that he later learned to be a roadside bomb about 100 to 150 yards from his home that hit a U.S. convoy of four Humvees, killing one Marine.

A native of the town, al-Hadithi was an administrator in Haditha’s main hospital before he took leave to work with Hammurabi, which was set up 16 months ago. He went to his window to see what was going on.

“There was an eerie silence after the explosion,” he said in Hammurabi’s Baghdad offices.

“Then, we started to hear noises, soldiers shouting, that grew louder and louder,” said al-Hadithi, who spoke while pointing to a map of the town he downloaded from the Internet.

The first house entered by the Marines was the family home of Abdul-Hamid Hassan Ali, a blind and elderly man in failing health. The house is just south of the spot where the roadside bomb went off, al-Hadithi said.

Later, the Marines moved next door to the house of Younis Salem Rsayef and his family.

“There was intense gunfire and I could see a fire at the Rsayef home,” said al-Hadithi, who watched from a window at his family home.

One of the 24 bodies taken to Haditha’s main hospital late on Nov. 19 was charred, according to Walid Abdul-Hameed al-Obeidi, the hospital director. That was believed to be one of Rsayef’s sons, who witnesses said was burned to death after a grenade was thrown into his room.

Ali and his wife, Khamisa Toamah Ali, were killed along with three of their sons, a daughter-in-law and a grandson, according to witnesses, hospital officials and human rights workers.

In the second home, eight people were killed: Rsayef, his wife, her sister and five children.

He said Marines stormed the house of Ayed Ahmed, the closest to al-Hadithi’s own home, about 10:30 a.m. There, he said, four brothers, all of fighting age, were ordered inside a closet and shot dead. Everyone else was spared, al-Hadithi said.

About the same time, a man who stepped out of his nearby house to see what was happening at Ayed Ahmed’s home was shot and wounded, according to al-Hadithi. Aws Fahmi, 43, was left to bleed on the street for about two hours before a female neighbor dragged him to safety, al-Hadithi told the AP.

Fahmi’s family was not able to take him to a hospital until two days later, al-Hadithi said.

At that point, the shooting stopped, although the security sweep lasted until about 4:30 p.m. and the Marines did not leave the town, he said.

Al-Hadithi’s account is mostly in line with other eyewitness reports. He said he expanded his personal observations at the time with follow-up interviews of other witnesses who saw actions that he could not see from his house. He made repeated visits to the restive town to get information, he said.

The U.S. military, after initially saying the Iraqi deaths were the result of the roadside bomb and a subsequent gunfight with insurgents, has not publicly released updated findings. But newer accounts including briefings to members of Congress have indicated at least some of the 24 deaths were the result of deliberate gunfire by a small group of Marines seeking revenge for the bombing, and that their actions were covered up by other Marines in the area who knew or suspected what had occurred.

Ellie