BAGHDAD: The killing began shortly after sunrise on a November day. As a US patrol rolled through Haditha, a homemade bomb exploded beneath the belly of a Humvee, rocking the sleepy riverside town.

“The Americans who were in the first vehicle came back to the damaged car. They started to scream and shout,” said a grey-haired shopkeeper who would give his name only as Abu Mukarram.

He said he watched the scene unfold from his bedroom window. “After some minutes, everything was quiet. During this quiet, no bullets were shot. They were moments of expectation.”

Ten minutes passed in silence. Then Abu Mukarram heard the crack of the first bullets.

Planted by guerillas at the edge of the road, the bomb had killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, a 20-year-old Marine from El Paso. Survivors and witnesses said Terrazas’ death drove some of the troops into a murderous rage.

Survivors say that furious Marines rampaged through a quiet street, bursting into homes and gunning down Iraqi civilians — including children, women and an elderly man in a wheelchair. Their account appears to match details emerging from a military investigation of the deaths of at least 24 Iraqi civilians on the morning of November 19.

In Iraq, by contrast, word of the deaths has spread slowly out of Haditha, blurring into the steady background noise of daily horrors.

This account of the November 19 killings comes from witness and survivor interviews conducted by Iraqi reporters in Baghdad and Haditha. The reporter who travelled to Haditha cannot be named for security reasons.

After the roadside bombing, the Marines arrived first at the door of Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali, 89, an amputee who used a wheelchair. They shot him, then turned their guns on his three sons and their families, survivors said.

Waleed Abdul Hameed, a 48-year-old worker in Al Anbar’s religious affairs office, was among the first of the family members to be gunned down. His nine-year-old daughter, Eman, said she was still wearing her pajamas when the Marines arrived. Her seven-year-old brother, Abdul Rahman, said he hid his face with a blanket when his father was shot.

A few minutes later, the boy saw his mother fall to the ground, dying.

“I saw her while she was crying,” he said. “She fell down on the floor bleeding.” Speaking days ago in Haditha, months after the attacks, the boy broke into tears, covered his eyes with his hands, and began to mutter to himself.

At his side, his elder sister began to speak again. Eman described how the two had waited for help, the bodies of their family members sprawled on the floor.

When the shooting began, Eman’s aunt, Hibba Abdullah, snatched her five-month-old niece off the floor. The baby’s mother had dropped her in shock after seeing her husband gunned down. Clutching the child, Hibba ran out of the house. She and the baby, Aasiya, survived.

Hibba’s 39-year-old husband also slipped out of the house and ran to warn his cousins nearby. But he crossed paths with the Americans on his way back; he died of gunshot wounds to the shoulder and head, Hibba said.

Seven family members were killed: Ali and his wife; their three sons and a daughter-in-law; and their five-year-old grandson. Only one of the household’s adults survived.

The Marines stopped next at the home of customs official Younis Salim Nusaif, 45, his wife, Aida Yassin, and their six children.

Everyone was at home when the troops arrived. And all but one 12-year-old girl were slain. Along with the parents and visiting sister, four girls and a boy, their ages ranging from four to 15, were shot by the Marines, said neighbours and the surviving child, Safa Younis Salim.

During a meeting with a reporter, Safa, with a round face and big brown eyes, was withdrawn and reluctant to talk about the attack. Only after her relatives coaxed her did she describe how she played dead. The Americans yelled in the faces of her family members before shooting them, she said, then kicked them and hit the bodies with their guns.

The schoolgirl said she lay on the ground, covered with her sister’s blood, and pretended to be dead while her family died around her. Her sister’s blood spurted fast; it was like a water tap, she said.

“I feel sorry. I was wishing to be alive,” said Safa. “Now I wish I had died with them.”

The troops moved along the street to another home. There, they killed four brothers, whose ages ranged from 20 to 38, a woman from the family said. First the Marines herded the women outside, pointed guns at their heads and ordered them to stay still, said the woman, who did not want her name published.

The men were grouped inside. Then the sound of gunfire rang out.

“After some minutes the soldiers ran out and left the house,” she said. The women went inside and found the men dead.

“They were shot in different parts of their bodies,” the woman said. “Spots of blood covered the place. Blood was coming out.”

The last to die apparently came upon the scene by chance. Four university students, two of them brothers, and their taxi driver drove too close to the spot where the families had been killed. Witnesses said US troops stopped their car, ordered them to get out and shot them.—Dawn/The Los Angeles Times News Service