The U.S. army opened two criminal investigations into reports that marines indiscriminately shot dead more than 26 Iraqi civilians in two separate incidents, BBC reported.
The first probe is related to an incident at the western town of Haditha last November, when U.S. marines shot dead at least 15 civilians, including seven women and three children.
The army initially claimed in a report that “15 Iraqi civilians were killed from the blast of a roadside bomb”.
But the military’s judge advocate general dismissed this report, and launched an investigation which led to the criminal probe into whether there was undisciplined or indiscriminate shooting by the marines.
Local residents in Haditha say the marines opened fire at passer-by and inhabitants of nearby homes after one of their colleagues was killed in a roadside bombing and another two were wounded.
Army investigators will now probe whether the civilians died in crossfire or were targeted in revenge for the death of the marine.
A Time reporter told the BBC that a videotape, given to the U.S. weekly by an Iraqi human rights group, show the civilians "could not have been killed by a roadside bomb".
"Their bodies were riddled with bullets," he said. "There was evidence there had been gunfire inside their homes, there were blood spatters inside their homes."
The Time says it presented its findings to the U.S. army.
The magazine quoted one Haditha resident as saying that U.S. troops killed her family.
"I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head," nine-year-old Eman Waleed said. "Then they killed my granny."
Human rights groups already said that the case would be the worst of its kind if the army investigation proved that the marines deliberately killed the 15 civilians.
The army is also investigating accusations by Iraqi police that U.S. soldiers shot dead a family of 11 in their home last week, Reuters reported.
The incident took place last Wednesday in the town of Ishaqi, north of Baghdad.
Local resident and police accused U.S. forces of killing 11 people from the same family, including five children under school age, four women and two men.
But the army said only four were killed.
"Because of that discrepancy, we have opened an investigation," Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, a top U.S. spokesman in Baghdad, said on Tuesday.
Police also say U.S. forces blew up the house after killing the family.
"It’s a clear and perfect crime without any doubt," said local police Colonel Farouq Hussein at the time, saying autopsies had found that all the victims were shot in the head.
The bodies, their hands bound, had been dumped in one room before the house was bombed, Hussein said.
There have been previous accusations by Iraqi civilians that U.S. occupation forces caused numerous civilian deaths since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, especially during the deadly offensive on Fallujah in November 2004.
Al-Jazeera