Troops Fire on Vehicle, Kill 7 Iraqi Civilians

U.S. soldiers shot and killed seven Iraqi civilians, including children, when they opened fire Monday on a vehicle that did not stop at a military checkpoint near Najaf in central Iraq, officials said.

In a similar incident early today, Marines said they shot an Iraqi man dead as he drove a pickup truck rapidly toward a checkpoint outside the town of Shatra, the Reuters news agency said.

U.S. military officials had no immediate comment on the shooting at Shatra. But Central Command said members of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, involved in the shooting near Najaf, appeared to have followed military rules of engagement.

A Washington Post reporter traveling with the division, however, wrote an account suggesting that the soldiers failed to react quickly enough when ordered to fire a warning shot at the four-wheel-drive Toyota.

The 3rd Infantry Division lost four soldiers at another checkpoint Saturday when an Iraqi army officer detonated a car bomb in a suicide attack.

In the Post story, Army Capt. Ronny Johnson was described as growing increasingly alarmed as the blue Toyota barreled toward the checkpoint.

“Fire a warning shot,” he ordered, according to the Post.

Then, the story said, he told the platoon to shoot a machine-gun round into the vehicle’s radiator. “Stop [messing] around!” Johnson reportedly yelled on the company radio when he still saw no action being taken. “Stop him, Red 1, stop him!”

That order brought loud reports of 25-millimeter cannon fire from one or more of the platoon’s Bradley fighting vehicles.

“Cease fire!” Johnson yelled at the platoon leader, according to the Post. “You just ... killed a family because you didn’t fire a warning shot soon enough.”

According to the Post, the platoon leader said he did, in fact, fire two warning shots, to no avail.

The military said 13 people were in the vehicle. But the Post reported that there were 15 and that 10 were killed, including women and five children who appeared to be younger than 5. Survivors were taken to U.S. field hospitals.

The deaths of the women and children were likely to fuel animosity toward the U.S. military as it moves toward Baghdad. Central Command said the soldiers followed the rules to protect themselves.

“In light of recent terrorist attacks by the Iraqi regime, the soldiers exercised considerable restraint to avoid the unnecessary loss of life,” the military’s statement said. An investigation is underway.

Among other incidents, officials at Central Command are investigating an explosion at a Baghdad market Friday that the Iraqis say killed more than 50 people. The carnage was broadcast repeatedly in the Arab world.

U.S. officials said the explosion could have been caused by an errant allied bomb or missile or by Iraqi antiaircraft fire that fell on the neighborhood.

Earlier, a U.S. jet bombed a bus carrying civilian workers to Syria, killing five and injuring 10.

Last week, after being fired on more than once from jitneys, a Marine guarding a road was so wary of an approaching vehicle that he opened fire, killing all inside, military sources said.

No weapons were found in the small bus or on the victims, said Brig. Gen. John Kelly, the 1st Marine Division’s assistant commander.