U.S. troops kill Iraqi couple in bed

McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — An Iraqi couple was killed in their bed Saturday morning as their daughter slept between them when U.S. forces raided their home.

The U.S. military said that the raid, in the area of Hawija, just west of Kirkuk, was an Iraqi government-approved operation against a wanted man and that the killings were in self-defense. But the family described the slayings of a modest farmer and his wife and the wounding of their daughter by U.S. forces as the three slept.

According to a U.S. military statement, at 2 a.m. U.S. and Iraqi soldiers entered the bedroom where the couple lay, and the woman reached under the mattress. The soldiers told her multiple times to show her hands; when she didn’t, they shot her, the statement said.

The woman’s husband, Dhia Hussein Ali, jumped up and “physically attacked” the soldiers after his wife was shot, the statement said. The soldiers killed him in self-defense, the statement said. The couple’s 9-year-old daughter, Alham, was injured during the attack.

After the killings a “high-powered pistol” was found under the mattress, the statement said. U.S. and Iraqi troops went to the house because they believed Ali was a member of al-Qaida in Iraq and later identified him as a wanted terrorist, the statement said. He had been detained at least once before by U.S. forces in a detention center in southern Iraq in 2004, his family said.

The U.S. military said the operation was “fully coordinated with Iraqi authorities [who were also present for the operation] and conducted with full respect for the Iraqi Constitution and the laws of Iraq.”

After a security agreement took effect Jan. 1, the U.S. military can conduct operations on their own if Iraqi authorities approve them and they are coordinated with Iraqi authorities.

Ali Dabbagh, the Iraqi government spokesman, said he had no information on the raid.

Brig. Gen Abdel Kareem Khalaf, the spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, told National Public Radio that no Iraqi forces were present at the raid, and he demanded an investigation. It was unclear if the raid was approved, he said.

“We have asked for a joint investigative committee plus we have asked for an explanation from the American side regarding what happened,” he told NPR. “Up to now there were victims on the ground and we have to know why.”