Ishaqi Incident - Events

Events

On March 15, 2006, U.S. Forces raided a house owned by Faiz Harat Khalaf, about sixty miles north of Baghdad in the Abu Sifa area of Ishaqi, (eight miles north of the city of Balad). The raid targeted an Al-Qaeda operative believed to have been present in the residence. The forces approached the house at around 2:30 am and a firefight ensued between the troops and unknown gunmen inside the house. The U.S. troops were supported by helicopter gunships, which also fired on the house.

Matthew Schofield of Knight Ridder Newspapers, who described the incident in an article on March 16, 2006, reported that as a result of the raid eleven Iraqi civilians were killed:

• Turkiya Muhammed Ali, 75 years
• Faiza Harat Khalaf, 30 years
• Faiz Harat Khalaf, 28 years
• Um Ahmad, 23 years
• Sumaya Abdulrazak, 22 years
• Aziz Khalil Jarmoot, 22 years
• Hawra Harat Khalaf, 5 years
• Asma Yousef Maruf, 5 years
• Osama Yousef Maruf, 3 years
• Aisha Harat Khalaf, 3 years
• Husam Harat Khalaf, 6 months

It was also reported that an Iraqi police report, filed by Staff Colonel Fadhil Muhammed Khalaf, the Assistant Chief of the Joint Coordination Center claimed:

"The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people, including 5 children, 4 women and 2 men, then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals."

Knight Ridder Newspapers and Times Online interviewed the brother of the owner of the house, Ibraheem Hirat Khalaf, who claimed that he witnessed the assault from his home 100 yards (91 m) away. He said that the U.S. troops used six missiles from helicopters to destroy the house as they were leaving. Searching the wreckage, he found the body of his mother Turkiya, her face unrecognisable. “She had been shot with a dumdum bullet,” he claimed.

A local police commander, Lt. Col. Farooq Hussain, interviewed by a Knight Ridder special correspondent in Ishaqi, said autopsies of the bodies performed at a hospital in Tikrit "revealed that all the victims had bullet shots in the head and all bodies were handcuffed." Amer Amery of Reuters reported Hussain saying that "autopsies had been carried out at Tikrit hospital and found 'all the victims had gunshot wounds to the head'. The bodies, found with their hands bound, had been dumped in one room before the house was destroyed, Hussain said. Police had found spent American-issue cartridges in the rubble." Schofield's story, which credited an Iraqi police report, was related on the U.S. radio program Democracy Now in March 2006.

Another neighbour, Hassan Kurdi Mahassen, was woken by the sound of helicopters and saw soldiers entering Fayez's home after spraying it with such heavy fire that walls crumbled. Mahassen said that once the soldiers had left—after apparently dropping several grenades that caused part of the house to collapse—villagers searched under the rubble "and found them all buried in one room".

"Women and even the children were blindfolded and their hands bound. Some of their faces were totally disfigured. A lot of blood was on the floors and the walls."

Reuters also reported that Major Ali Ahmed of the Ishaqi police said U.S. forces had landed on the roof of the house in the early hours and shot the 11 occupants, including the five children. "After they left the house they blew it up," he said.

Television footage apparently from a local Iraqi station, "showed the bodies in the Tikrit morgue—five children, two men and four women. Their wounds were not clear though one infant had a gaping head wound." The Associated Press’ Hameed Rasheed was on the scene and took several images of the victims.