Iraq’s justice minister today demanded strong punishment for a group of American soldiers charged with raping a woman and killing her and her family in the town of Mahmudiyah.

Steven D. Green, 21, a former private with the US Army’s 101st Airborne Division, has appeared in court in North Carolina in connection with the attack.

He could face the death penalty if convicted over the latest alleged atrocity to taint the image of US soldiers in Iraq.

At least four other US troops still serving in Iraq are under investigation for the killings, and the military has stressed that it taking the allegations seriously.

Crime scene photos taken after the alleged incident in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, in March show pictures of an Iraqi woman, an Iraqi male and a young girl, believed to be aged 5, who all appeared to have died of gunshot wounds.

Today Hashim Abdul-Rahman al-Shebli, the Iraq justice minister, described the attack as "monstrous and inhuman", and called on the UN Security Council to ensure that the US soldiers under investigation were punished.

"If this act actually happened, it constitutes an ugly and unethical crime, monstrous and inhuman," said Mr Abdul-Rahman al-Shebli, a Sunni Arab. "The Iraqi judiciary should be informed about this investigation which should be conducted under supervision of international and human organizations. Those involved should face justice.

"The ugliness of this crime demands a swift intervention of the UN Security Council to stop these violations of human rights and to condemn them so that they will not happen again."

According to a federal affidavit, Green and three other soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division had talked about raping the young woman, whom they first saw while working at a traffic checkpoint near her home.

On the day of the attack, the document said, Mr Green and other soldiers drank alcohol and changed out of their uniforms to avoid detection before going to the woman’s house.

Once there, the affidavit said, Green took three members of the family, an adult male and female, and a girl estimated to be 5 years old, into a bedroom. Shots were heard.

Mr Green allegedly shot the woman in the head after he and another soldier raped her, the affidavit said.

He is being prosecuted in federal, rather than military court because he was honorably discharged from the Army due to a "personality disorder" before the attack came to light, the affadavit said.

Mr Green is due to appear in court again on July 10 in North Carolina, before being transferred to Kentucky, prosecutors in Louisville, Kentucky said.

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