- BAGHDAD (AFP) -- US troops
were accused of killing 40 people at a wedding in an Iraqi desert town,
while the Pentagon said air strikes were conducted on a house used by foreign
fighters near the Syrian border.
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- The attack occurred at a time when the coalition is reeling
from a prison abuse scandal in which a US soldier was jailed for one year
in the first court martial over the affair.
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- Pan-Arab satellite television Al-Arabiya and a man who
said he witnessed the incident said US planes targeted the wedding celebration
in the Makreddin village in the Qaim region.
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- Al-Arabiya, which aired footage of bodies wrapped in
blankets and loaded on trucks, said the dead included women and children
and quoted witnesses as saying the aircraft also destroyed other houses
in the village.
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- Pentagon officials said they had no information the attack,
but reported that US forces had raided a suspected safe house for foreign
fighters in the open desert near the Syrian border at 3:00 am (1100 GMT
Tuesday).
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- "During the operation, the coalition forces came
under hostile fire, and returned fire," he said.
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- "Coalition forces on the ground recovered a large
amount of Iraqi and Syrian currency, foreign passports and sophisticated
communications equipment."
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- The raid came hours before the first Baghdad court martial
Wednesday over the US prison abuse scandal, at which soldier Jeremy Sivits
was sentenced to a maximum 12-month jail term.
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- Other courts martial are to follow but so far only low-ranking
soldiers have been charged despite allegations that senior US officers
were aware of the practice.
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- Sivits was reduced from the rank of specialist and will
receive the salary of a private while serving his prison term before being
discharged from the army.
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- He pleaded guilty to charges relating to the abuse and
humiliation of Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad in November.
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- Sivits admitted being involved in a conspiracy to pile
inmates on top of each other in a pyramid but denied having taken any photos
on that occasion.
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- In a graphic description of the events, Sivits told the
court that he saw some seven detainees on the floor getting "stomped
on" by two other soldiers.
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- "I led the detainee in and pushed him into the pile,"
he told the court in response to questioning from Judge Colonel James Pohl.
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- Another three soldiers appeared in the makeshift courtroom
for a pre-trial hearing earlier in the day though no date was set for their
courts martial.
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- Pohl ordered Sergeant Javal Davis, 26, Staff Sergeant
Ivan Frederick, 37, and Specialist Charles Graner, 35, to return on June
21 for another hearing.
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- Davis faces five charges, including maltreatment of detainees,
notably piling them into a heap and jumping on them.
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- Frederick faces six charges that include punching a detainee
in a way that was "likely to produce death or grievous bodily harm".
Graner faces seven charges including assaulting detainees and dereliction
of duty.
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- The pictures of grinning US soldiers posing by a heap
of naked Iraqi men revealed last month sparked worldwide outrage.
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- Additional pictures described as much worse -- shown
to US lawmakers -- have not been made public, feeding allegations that
responsibility for the abuse went much higher up the military and political
chain of command.
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- In Washington, General John Abizaid, head of US Central
Command, and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US forces
in Iraq, answered before the Senate Armed Forces Committee over the outrage
over Abu Ghraib.
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- "We have suffered a setback," Abizaid told
the panel. "I accept responsibility for that setback."
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- "From evidence already gathered, we believe that
systemic problems existed at the prison that may have contributed to events
there," Abizaid went on.
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- The coalition and the US administration, which have come
under heavy fire over the scandal, have pointed to the courts martial as
evidence that they are determined to punish anyone involved in mistreating
prisoners.
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- As attention centered on the case tried in Baghdad, new
clashes were reported elsewhere in Iraq.
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- A US soldier was killed when a gunman hiding in a cemetery
fired on a patrol in Miqdadiya, north of Baghdad, and a British civilian
worker was shot and killed while driving between the northern cities of
Mosul and Arbil.
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- Both attacks Tuesday were only reported Wednesday by
the US military and the British Foreign Office respectively.
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- In the central city of Karbala, seven Iraqis were killed
and 14 wounded in nearly 24 hours of heavy clashes between coalition troops
and militiamen loyal to firebrand Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr, hospital
sources said.
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- Meanwhile, a burial service was held late Wednesday in
the holy city of Najaf for Ezzedine Salim, the leader of the US-backed
Governing Council, who was killed in a car bomb Monday outside the coalition
headquarters.
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- A group headed by Al-Qaeda-linked Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi
claimed responsibility for the attack, a Saudi newspaper reported, even
though another movement previously said it had carried out the suicide
car bombing.
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