MoD Information

US Backs Soldiers at Checkpoint

Tue, April 01, 2003

Source: Guardian Unlimited

A spokesman for US central command today backed soldiers who shot seven women and children at a checkpoint and blamed the Iraqi regime for the killings

A spokesman for US central command today backed soldiers who shot seven women and children at a checkpoint and blamed the Iraqi regime for the killings.

Navy Captain Frank Thorp said initial reports indicated the soldiers from the US 3rd Infantry Division had acted properly in firing on a car that failed to stop at a checkpoint in the southern Iraqi desert near Najaf.

According to the US military, the soldiers motioned for the car to stop and fired warning shot when their commands were ignored. When those shots were ignored the soldiers fired shots into the car engine but it continued to drive towards the checkpoint.

The soldiers then fired into the passenger compartment of the vehicle.

Troops have been nervous, and have been ordered to be more cautious, after a suicide car bomb attack on Saturday killed four US soldiers at a checkpoint, also near Najaf.

Capt Throp blamed the killings - the worst single case of civilian deaths in the war to have been admitted by US forces so far - on Iraq's guerrilla tactics and its practice of using women and children as shields.

"The most horrendous thing about this is that this is the result of what is apparently the strategy of the regime to challenge us at checkpoints, which has caused us to be on our toes and ensure that these are not suicide bombers," he said.

"So the blood of this incident is on the regime of Saddam Hussein."

But a different account was provided by the Washington Post. Its report quoted the US captain at the intersection as saying his forward platoon had failed to give the van ample notice that it would be shelled.

"You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!" it quoted Captain Ronny Johnson telling his platoon leader.

In another incident US marines today said that they had shot dead an unarmed Iraqi who drove his pick-up truck at speed towards a checkpoint in the southern town of Shatra.

"I thought it was a suicide bomb," one of the soldiers who fired on the vehicle told Reuters.

British army spokesman Colonel Chris Vernon said that the killings undermined attempts to win over the local population, but added that US and British forces would be fully supported if they defended themselves against a perceived threat.

"We must allow our junior commanders who are doing the business on the ground to make these split-second decisions as they think best," he told the BBC.

Pictures of injured and dead civilians, broadcast across the Muslim world by Arabic satellite channels, have fuelled opposition to the war and sparked angry protests.