BERLIN, Feb 25: US soldiers in Iraq shot dead people they knew were wounded in a potential breach of Geneva conventions, according to an account due to be screened Thursday on German public television.
The Panorama programme on ARD television said it had video evidence showing two separate incidents. In the first, recorded by a CNN camera on April 8, 2003, a unit of Marines shoot a previously severely wounded Iraqi while sweeping a Baghdad industrial zone. The soldiers are then heard cheering.
In the second, recorded on December 1, 2003 by a camera on a US army Apache helicopter, three people seen gathering at night near a vehicle put an object on the ground that the soldiers suspect might be a weapon. The helicopter crew is heard receiving the instruction to open fire.
They do so, killing two of the men on the ground and severely wounding the third. When a US soldier asks whether he should shoot the survivor, the order comes through: "Hit him!" and a further salvo follows. The Geneva conventions forbid the shooting of an injured individual either in wartime or under occupation. -AFP
