WikiLeaks Prompts New Iraqi Probe on 2006 Raid

The Iraqi government is reopening a probe into a 2006 raid by American troops that killed 11 civilians, including women and children. The move comes in the wake of the release of a new batch of WikiLeaks documents that call into question the U.S.’s version of events, The Washington Post reported.

Residents of Ishaqi have maintained the soldiers executed 11 people and then covered up the crime by hitting the town 60 miles north of Baghdad with an airstrike. The Pentagon’s Lt. Col. Jim Gregory told the Post, “Basically there’s nothing new we haven’t looked into already. Our position remains the same.”

In a new WikiLeaks document, U.N. inspector Philip Alston describes how U.S. forces approached a house March 15, 2006 and “handcuffed all the residents and executed them.” He said that autopsies done on the dead that included five children under the age of 5 showed “all the corpses were shot in the head and handcuffed,” the Post reported.

The military maintains there was no wrong doing and that the troops were under direct fire from the building. During the raid, American forces captured Kuwaiti-born al-Qaida cell leader Ahmad Abdallah Muhammad Na’is al-Utaybi and killed an Iraqi bombmaker, the Post reported.

A Pentagon investigation concluded that the troops used appropriate force in taking down a safe house, the Post reported.