WASHINGTON, Aug 4: Six US Marines have been charged with assaulting several Iraqi civilians in the town of Hamdania in April.

Three of the six men in this case have been charged in a separate case involving the death of a 54-year-old Iraqi man in Hamdania that same month.

The three –- Sergeant Lawrence Hutchins, Corporal Trent Thomas and Lance-Corporal Jerry Shumate, Junior –- are part of a group of seven Marines accused of removing Hashim Ibrahim Awad from his home and shooting him to death.

Investigators say the Marines placed a rifle and shovel next to his body to make it appear he was planting a roadside bomb.

Authorities learned of the alleged assaults during the investigation into Awad’s death.

The Hamdania murder case is just one of many in which US servicemen are suspected of killing Iraqi civilians. A total of eight men have been charged with premeditated murder and other crimes in that killing.

Other Marines at Camp Pendleton have been accused in a separate case of killing 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq. None, however, have been charged.

Four US Army soldiers, however, have been charged in the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl, and the killing of three members of her family.