WikiLeaks: Iraqi Children in US Raid Shot in Head

The bodies of three of the five children reportedly killed by US troops during a raid in the rural Ishaqi area of Iraq, 03/15/06. (photo: AP)

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By Matthew Schofield, McClatchy News

01 September 11



US diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that US troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.

The unclassified cable, which was posted on WikiLeaks' website last week, contained questions from a United Nations investigator about the incident, which had angered local Iraqi officials, who demanded some kind of action from their government. US officials denied at the time that anything inappropriate had occurred.

But Philip Alston, the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said in a communication to American officials dated 12 days after the March 15, 2006, incident that autopsies performed in the Iraqi city of Tikrit showed that all the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head. Among the dead were four women and five children. The children were all 5 years old or younger.

Read the Cable:
Cable: Massacre of Iraqi family by US troops in 2006.