A MEMBER of the US Marines unit accused of murdering 24 unarmed Iraqis said yesterday that his colleagues “were blinded by hate” and lost control before the massacre.

Corporal James Crossan, who was injured in the roadside bomb attack that appears to have triggered the incident, was speaking just before President Bush said that he was troubled by the reports. “If laws were broken there will be punishment,” he said.

Several members of the unit were young and inexperienced and may have snapped after seeing one of their colleagues killed by the bomb, Corporal Crossan said. “I think they were blinded by hate . . . and they just lost control.” Corporal Crossan, who passed out soon after being hit by the bomb in al-Haditha on November 19 last year, said that the unit had a lot of new members. “

They might have got scared or they were just p*****, really p***** off and did it.”

The White House said that details of the military investigations into the killings — in what could be the worst case of criminal misconduct by US troops since the invasion — would be made public.

The incident has sparked two investigations, one into the killings and another into whether they were covered up. Up to a dozen Marines are under investigation and several may face murder charges. The Times has gathered witness accounts of the apparent slaughter in the town.

Iman Hassan, a ten-year-old Iraqi girl, described watching US Marines kill her mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, four-year-old cousin and two uncles.

Neighbours corroborated elements of her story and described to our correspondent the murder of a second family, which included five children, the youngest of whom were 2 and 3. In Washington, Iraq’s new Ambassador to the US said that his cousin, who lived in al-Haditha, had been murdered by US troops five months before the incident.

Samir al-Sumeidi said that he believed his cousin, 21-year-old Muhammad al-Sumeidi, “was killed intentionally and unnecessarily”. He also accused the US military of trying to cover up the November incident.

Details of an initial military investigation, undertaken in March and leaked to The New York Times, showed flaws in the Marine unit’s original claims that the Iraqi civilians killed in al-Haditha were the victims of a roadside bomb.

Citing death certificates, the report showed that all 24 victims, including seven women and three children, had been shot, most in the head and chest. The investigation also found that $38,000 (£20,000) had been paid by the Marines to families of 15 victims.

Meanwhile, the White House faced continued fallout from the incident as another tragedy fuelled anti-American sentiment yesterday: the shooting of two unarmed Iraqi women by US troops.

The women, one of whom was apparently about to give birth, were shot dead by US troops north of Baghdad, the Pentagon said.

The troops fired on their vehicle after it failed to stop at an observation post, a Pentagon official said.

“Coalition forces later received reports from Iraqi police . . . that one of the females may have been pregnant,” the official added.

Times Recommends

• LA profits from Michael Jackson stimulus
• Berlusconi's absent wife causes G8 headache
• Chimps that took a punishing step for Man