General George Casey, the top US commander in Iraq, called for the emergency tutorials in “warrior values” after leaks from the al-Haditha investigation suggested that US Marines went on a shooting rampage in the western Iraqi town after one of their men was killed by a roadside bomb in November.

There was further embarrassment for the US last night when new video evidence suggesting that its forces deliberately killed 11 Iraqi civilians in Ishaqi, north of Baghdad, in March was shown by the BBC. The US said at the time that four people died in a military operation, but Iraqi police claimed that US troops had shot the 11 people.

British officers privately expressed surprise at their inclusion in the morals programme. The 7,200 British troops in Iraq have largely escaped charges of being trigger-happy. “Our rules of engagement are much tighter than the American version and there are differences in approach between the British and American troops,” one senior military source told The Times.

The US military appears to have learnt the lessons from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2004, when the Pentagon was taken aback by the public outcry after photos of humiliated Iraqi prisoners were obtained by the media. This time it appears eager to shape the debate before the al- Haditha investigation reports.

It announced yesterday that commanders had been directed “to conduct core warrior values training, highlighting the importance of adhering to legal, moral and ethical standards on the battlefield”. The training will be based on “a slide presentation with training vignettes”.

Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s Prime Minister, said that he was setting up a ministerial committee to examine the al-Haditha case and to establish new ground rules for coalition troops. “The crime and misery of al-Haditha . . . is a terrible crime where women and children were eliminated,” he said.

Adnan Ali, Mr al-Maliki’s adviser, said that the Government wanted to revisit the UN mandate for coalition forces before it expired in December. He said that it was no longer content to grant those forces all-encompassing powers to conduct raids and arrests.

“This incident [al-Haditha] and others have really alarmed the Iraqi Government,” he said. “Security needs to be in the hands of the Iraqis.”

While the investigation into al-Haditha is not expected to be completed this month, a second inquiry into how the Marines allegedly covered up the deaths and passed false information up the chain of command should be finished next week.

Pentagon officials said that the second inquiry had found that Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, who is alleged to have played a central role in the shootings, had falsely informed his superiors that the civilians killed in al-Haditha had died in a roadside bomb.

US Marines sent to collect the dead failed to report that they had been killed by gunshots, not a bomb. Lieutenant-General Peter Chiarelli, the US second-in-command in Iraq, defended his troops yesterday, and insisted that al-Haditha was the exception to the rule. “Of the nearly 150,000 coalition forces in Iraq, 99.9 per cent of them perform their jobs magnificently every day. They do their duty with honour under difficult circumstances,” he said.

Major-General William Caldwell, the senior US military spokesman in Iraq, said that there were four investigations into alleged crimes by coalition soldiers in Iraq.

US military prosecutors said last night that they plan to file murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges against seven Marines and a Navy corpsman in the shooting death of an Iraqi civilian west of Baghdad on April 26. The men served in Iraq with the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment.

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