NEW YORK, May 27: US investigators are convinced that a Marine unit killed as many as 24 unarmed Iraqis, some of them ‘execution style in the Iraqi town of Haditha in November last year after a roadside bomb killed an American, officials close to the investigation told the Los Angeles Times, citing photographs taken by a Marine intelligence unit.

The case may be the most serious incident of alleged war crimes in Iraq by US troops. Marine officers have long been worried that resistance by Iraq’s guerrillas could prompt such a reaction by combat teams, the newspaper said in its Saturday edition.

Photographs taken by a Marine intelligence team have convinced investigators that a unit killed 24 unarmed Iraqis, some of them ‘execution-style, the paper said.

The pictures are said to show wounds to the upper bodies of the victims, who included several women and six children. Some were shot in the head and some in the back, congressional and defence officials told the newspaper.

One government official told the paper the pictures showed that infantry Marines from Camp Pendleton ‘suffered a total breakdown in morality and leadership, with tragic results.