t r u t h o u t - Innocent Civilians Being Killed by US Troops

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t r u t h o u t - Innocent Civilians Being Killed by US Troops

" Innocent civilians, including people who are considered vital to building democracy, are increasingly being killed by US troops.

Baghdad - Three men in an unmarked sedan pulled up near the headquarters of the national police major crimes unit. The two passengers, wearing traditional Arab dishdasha gowns, stepped from the car.

At the same moment, a U.S. military convoy emerged from an underpass. Apparently believing the men were staging an ambush, the Americans fired, killing one passenger and wounding the other. The sedan's driver was hit in the head by two bullet fragments.

The soldiers drove on without stopping.

This kind of shooting is far from rare in Baghdad, but the driver of the car was no ordinary casualty. He was Iraqi police Brig. Gen. Majeed Farraji, chief of the major crimes unit. His passengers were unarmed hitchhikers whom he was dropping off on his way to work.

'The reason they shot us is just because the Americans are reckless,' the general said from his hospital bed hours after the July 6 shooting, his head wrapped in a white bandage. 'Nobody punishes them or blames them.'"

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Salihee's widow, Raghad al Wazzan, said she accepted the American soldiers' presence when they first arrived in Iraq because "they came and liberated us." She sometimes helped them at the hospital where she works as a doctor. But not anymore.

"Now, after they killed my husband, I hate them," she said. "I want to blow them all up.