Probing Bloodbath

The incident at Haditha is sure to attract massive media attention as it winds through the military criminal-justice system. No men have been charged with any wrongdoing, and a lawyer who represents two Marines under investigation has angrily declared that "the bastards who are leaking information should be strung by their necks in a public square." The attorney, David Brahms, a retired brigadier general who was the corps's top lawyer in the 1980s, says, "There are some startling things that are going to come out down the road and not from the mouths of the Pentagon." But he would not say what.

The stories told by the villagers of Haditha are bloodcurdling. Nov. 19 was a "shiny morning," clear and chilly, recalled Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi, who was sound asleep when the explosion went off. It was an enormous clap that shook the walls. He rushed to the kitchen window and looked across the street. An IED had gone off nearby, killing an American soldier, though Thabit did not know that. He could hear voices outside, then soldiers shouting in English: "F---, f---," he thought he heard them say. The shouts grew louder and were drowned by other sounds, the crackle of a machine gun and the sound of flashbang grenades. Thabit could see American troops heading toward the house of his neighbor Abdel Hamid Hassan. He couldn't see how many Marines went into Hassan's house, but he could soon see smoke pouring out the window.

A novice journalist, Thabit went to the morgue the next morning with a video camera. In Hassan's house, seven of the 11 members of the family had been found dead. The elderly patriarch--blind, and confined to a wheelchair--had been shot at close range, along with his wife. The Marines hit two other houses, smashing furniture and shooting occupants, Thabit recounted in an interview with NEWSWEEK.

One of those houses was owned by Jamal Ayed Ahmed, 40, a used-car salesman. He was there with his three brothers, a policeman, a local bureaucrat and a college student. "The Americans came and asked Jamal, 'Erhab? Erhab? [Terrorism? Terrorism?],' and he said, 'No'," recalled Jamal's wife, Asmaa, who was interviewed on videotape by a human-rights investigator hired by NEWSWEEK to help report. The Marines demanded to know, "Do you have any weapons?" The brothers produced two AK-47s, one with five bullets inside.

The scene apparently became chaotic. One of the women in the house was pushing frantically on a door to one of the rooms; the Americans tried to get the women to stop screaming. Shots rang out and the Americans left. The four brothers were found dead in a small room.

Hiba Abdullah, another Haditha resident who spoke on videotape, recalled lying in bed with her husband, Rashid, when the IED exploded in front of her house. "I opened my eyes and looked at Rashid and he told me, 'I swear that we will die'." Hiba asked, "Why do you say that?" but the shrapnel was already starting to come down, Hiba recalled. "It was like rain."