With US commanders still struggling to contain the fallout from the alleged al-Haditha massacre, the US military was faced with claims that American soldiers rounded up and shot 11 unarmed civilians, including five children — one only six months old — and four women, in the town of Ishaqi in March.

It also emerged that murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges are likely to be brought imminently against seven Marines and a Navy corpsman for killing an Iraqi civilian near Baghdad on April 26. They are being held in solitary confinement at Camp Pendelton Marine Corps base in California.

The Iraqi civilian that they killed was allegedly dragged from his home and shot. The troops are alleged to have planted a shovel and an AK-47 rifle next to his body to make it appear as if he was an insurgent burying a roadside bomb.

The charges against the American troops have already driven a wedge between the US military and Iraq’s new Government. Responding to the alleged massacre of 24 Iraqis in al-Haditha in November, Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, accused US troops of habitually killing unarmed civilians. He said that violence against civilians by coalition troops was a “daily phenomenon” and that many troops “do not respect the Iraqi people. They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on a suspicion or a hunch.”

Ordering an Iraqi investigation of the al-Haditha incident, Mr al-Maliki demanded the US files into the alleged massacre. He was speaking hours before the BBC broadcast video footage on Thursday suggesting that there may have been another massacre in Ishaqi, north of Baghdad, on March 15.

Last night the Pentagon said that despite the new footage, which appeared to contradict the US military account of events in Ishaqi, a military investigation had cleared all troops involved of misconduct.

The US military account in March said that as US-led forces approached the house of a suspected al-Qaeda operative, they came under fire. The troops called in an airstrike and the building was destroyed, with an insurgent, two women and a child killed.

However, the video footage shows at least five children dead, four of whom appeared to have bullet wounds to the head. Local Iraqi police officials said that the US troops kept an entire unarmed family handcuffed in a room for an hour, before spraying them with bullets. They then blew up the building.

Last night Major-General William Caldwell said that “allegations that the troops executed a family living in this safe house, and then hid the alleged crimes by directing an air strike, are absolutely false”.

He added: “A thorough investigation . . . revealed that the ground force commander, while capturing and killing terrorists, operated in accordance with the rules of engagement governing our combat forces in Iraq.”

For the first time Pentagon officials last night added to their previous description of the Ishaqi incident, saying that an AC-130 gunship — an aircraft that pummels its target with side-firing guns — had been involved in the assault.

US military commanders in Baghdad said yesterday that in addition to the alleged al-Haditha massacre, “three or four” other cases of alleged unlawful killings by US troops were under investigation.

Brigadier-General Donald Campbell, Chief of Staff of coalition forces in Iraq, was asked why these alleged incidents were occurring. He replied: “When you’re in a combat theatre dealing with enemy combatants who don’t abide by the law of war, who do acts of indecency, soldiers become stressed; they become fearful.”

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