US Marines massacre of Iraqi civilians revealed in gruesome photos

Photographs of a massacre of dozens of Iraqi civilians by US Marines almost two decades ago have finally been published, following a lengthy legal battle and investigation.

The New Yorker magazine has published dozens of photographs of the scene, after the US military finally relented over the release of the previously classified images. The gruesome photos show entire families who were shot at close range by the US troops, who did not spare either women or children.

The massacre in question took place in Haditha, Iraq, on 19 November 2005. US Marines killed 24 Iraqi men, women and children in three homes, and shot five men driving to their Baghdad college. The youngest victim was a three-year-old girl; the oldest was a seventy-six-year-old man. The resultant war-crime investigation has been one of the longest in American history.

One US Marine was killed nearby in an IED explosion just hours earlier; two other marines were wounded. As a result, the Marine Corps argued during legal proceedings that they had simply been responding to and fighting Iraqi insurgents that day. Despite all of those who were killed being civilians, the four marines who were charged with murder later had the charges dropped, and the case ended in a plea deal without a prison sentence being imposed.

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The pictures showed 42-year-old Ayda Yassin Ahmed, surrounded by her dead children in the family bedroom. They also showed five-year-old Zainab Younis Salim, who was shot in the head by a marine next to her mother, sisters and brother. The bodies have clear numbers written on their skin, which the marines drew in order to register and identify them.

The publishing of the photos is the result of a lengthy legal battle by the New Yorker after the US Navy and military refused to respond to its Freedom of Information Act request. After travelling to Iraq and meeting with family members of the victims, the magazine’s team managed to gain the help of Khalid Salman Raseef, a lawyer who lost 15 family members in the massacre, and Khalid Jamal, who was 14 years old when his father and his uncles were killed that day.

The two men collected 17 other signatures for the lawsuits against the US military, stating clearly that the family members of those killed were actively willing to receive the photos and other information regarding the massacre. The US military finally relented to those efforts and handed over the photos in March this year.

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