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US backs checkpoint killings soldiers

A spokesman for US central command today backed soldiers who shot seven women and children at a checkpoint and blamed the Iraqi regime for the killings.

Navy Captain Frank Thorp said initial reports indicated the soldiers from the US 3rd Infantry Division had acted properly in firing on a car that failed to stop at a checkpoint in the southern Iraqi desert near Najaf last night.

According to the US military, the soldiers motioned for the car to stop and fired warning shot when their commands were ignored. When those shots were ignored the soldiers fired shots into the car engine but it continued to drive towards the checkpoint.

The soldiers then fired into the passenger compartment of the vehicle.

Today, the 13th day of the conflict, US marines shot dead another unarmed driver and badly wounded his passenger at a roadblock in the southern town of Shatra, south of Baghdad. He was shot at after his pickup truck was driven at speed towards a checkpoint. "I thought it was a suicide bomb," one of the soldiers who fired on the vehicle told Reuters.

However a different picture was provided by the Washington Post which quoted the US captain at the intersection as saying his forward platoon had failed to give the van ample notice that it would be shelled. "You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!" it quoted Captain Ronny Johnson telling his platoon leader.

Troops have been nervous, and have been ordered to be more cautious, after the suicide car bomb attack on Saturday which killed four US soldiers at a checkpoint near Najaf, which is close
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