IRAQ U.S. soldier gets prison in murder case

There have been no details about the charges against a soldier from Salem.
WASHINGTON POST
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A U.S. soldier was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of an Iraqi National Guardsman in May, the U.S. military said Saturday.
The announcement came as a spate of attacks involving insurgents and U.S.-led forces spread across Iraq. The U.S. military announced that four Marines were killed in three separate situations in Anbar province Friday and that another soldier was killed by a roadside bomb Saturday in the capital.
In the restive city of Fallujah, U.S. warplanes launched airstrikes early Saturday and again at night. The attacks killed 15 people and wounded 30, doctors in the city told the Associated Press.
In Baghdad, gunmen fired on a vehicle carrying Iraqi National Guard applicants, killing six people, police said, according to the Associated Press.
About murder case
The conviction of Spec. Federico Merida was thought to be the first of a U.S. soldier in the murder of an Iraqi since the war began. The killing took place in May at an air base near the city of Ad Dawr, near Tikrit, the statement said. Merida had pleaded guilty to the charges.
Courts-martial are open to the public, but the military did not announce Merida's case. No further details were available as a result.
Sgt. Brent W. May, 22, of Salem, and Sgt. Michael P. Williams, 25, of Memphis, Tenn., were charged last week with murder in Iraq. May and Williams have been charged with premeditated murder of three Iraqis. Officials with the U.S. Central Command have given no further details in that case.
The fighting across the country illustrated the disparate battles that the U.S. military and the insurgents continue to wage in what has been an unrelenting spiral of violence.
In Fallujah, U.S. forces have launched what has become a prolonged bombing campaign to take back the city from loyalists of Musab Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant linked to Al-Qaida. Al-Zarqawi has asserted responsibility for a string of recent kidnappings, including the videotaped beheadings last week of two hostages, Eugene "Jack" Armstrong and Jack Hensley, who were both American contractors.
Briton's fate uncertain
The fate of Kenneth Bigley, a British civil engineer who was kidnapped with the two Americans on Sept. 16, remained uncertain Saturday. Victoria Whitford, a spokeswoman for the British Embassy in Baghdad, said British officials were "not giving any credence" to a report that appeared on an Islamic Web site claiming that Bigley, 62, had also been beheaded.
The British government said it doubted the credibility of the statement because it appeared on a different Web site from one on which the beheadings of Armstrong and Hensley were originally posted. The statement also said insurgents had kidnapped seven British soldiers, which officials said they thought was untrue.
In addition to the kidnappings, insurgents have continued to attack police and National Guard recruits from the nascent Iraqi security forces, the linchpin of a U.S. strategy to hold nationwide elections in January. Hours after the attack on the National Guards, four mortar rounds landed in a Baghdad sporting club where hundreds of police recruits had been summoned for a meeting.
The fighting in Fallujah began at 11:30 p.m. Friday when U.S. forces attacked what a U.S. military statement said was a "an offensive obstacle belt" composed primarily of concrete and earthen barriers containing bombs.
Construction of the barriers was "considered a hostile act," the statement said, and served to "undermine and discredit the authority of Iraqi civic leaders and restrict the people of Fallujah from living a normal life."
Grenades launched
Around 3:30 a.m. Saturday, insurgents operating out of vacant houses in the Askari neighborhood launched rocket-propelled grenades and mortars at a U.S. base on the periphery of the city.
At 4:05 a.m., witnesses said, U.S. warplanes and attack helicopters destroyed five houses that were used by the insurgents and another that was occupied by a family.
Rafid Hiyad Isawi, the director of Fallujah General Hospital, said a couple and their two children were among the dead. The U.S. military said in a statement: "There were no innocent civilians reported in the immediate area at the time of the strike."
Ahmed Zawbae, said his brother Mahmoud and his family were killed in the raid. He said insurgents had warned the family to leave the area but his sister-in-law had been too ill to be moved.
"This area is turned into a war zone for both sides; this resulted in the killing of my brother and his family," Zawbae said. "They are civilians and innocent. What could they do?"