(Updated: Originally published December 2, 2006)
"U.S. Troops Kill 5 Girls in Assault on Insurgents" by EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Nov. 28 — American troops killed five girls, including at least one baby, and what the military described as either a boy or a man, when the troops attacked a house Tuesday in volatile Anbar Province after they suspected insurgents of firing at them from the roof.
Another person, which the military described in a written statement as either a girl or a young woman, was wounded in the attack and refused treatment by the Americans.
The military said the killings occurred after the Americans spotted two suspected insurgents before dawn near a roadside bomb in the town of Hamaniyah, west of Baghdad. The men fled to the roof of a nearby house. When the Americans began defusing the bomb, the suspected insurgents began shooting, the military said.
The military said the Americans returned fire with machine guns and small arms and rounds from the main gun of one or more tanks. After the firefight, the Americans discovered the six dead Iraqis in the house.
It was unclear what happened to the suspected insurgents, but the military said “it was reported” that one was wounded in the fight and carried away by other insurgents.
“In a very tragic way, today reminds us that insurgents’ actions throughout Iraq are felt by all,” Lt. Col. Bryan Salas, a Marine spokesman, said in the statement. “Efforts are under way to coordinate and offer available assistance to surviving family members.”
Anbar Province, a vast swath of desert and Euphrates River towns stretching from Baghdad to Iraq’s western border, is the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency, which is battling to drive out the Americans and unseat the majority Shiites from the Iraqi government.
American troops in Anbar are fighting a holding action, unable to make any real headway against the insurgency while facing a mostly hostile civilian population. The pressures have already led to prominent incidents of civilian deaths — one unit of Marines is being investigated for whether it wrongfully killed 24 unarmed civilians in the town of Haditha last year."
But the surge fixed all that!
Or did it?
Twin bombings kill at least 26 in Iraq
