Photographs taken by Agence France Presse but not distributed by major US media outlets show the bodies of Iraqi civilians killed in March in a home in Ishaqi, Iraq. Those photographs — may of which are graphic and show the decaying bodies of children, some of them babies — are displayed below. Please do not scroll down if you do not wish to see these photos.
The photographs were discovered and highlighted by by Christopher Floyd of ChrisFloyd.com earlier this year.
According to Reuters report on the incident, the 11 bodies of men, women and children, including a 75-year old grandmother and a child under the age one one, were found bound in their blown-up home. All were shot in the head; the house was riddled with bullets. At the time, “The U.S. military said two women and a child died during the bid to seize an al Qaeda militant from a house.”
“A senior Iraqi police officer said autopsies on the bodies, which included five children, showed each had been shot in the head. Community leaders said they were outraged at the killings and demanded an explanation from the U.S. military,” Reuters reported. “Television footage showed the bodies in the Tikrit morgue — five children, two men and four women. Their wounds were not clear though one infant had a gaping head wound.”
Wrote Floyd, “We know from photographic evidence that the corpses of two men, four shrouded figure s (women, according to the villagers), and five children – all of them apparently under the age of five, one as young as seven months – were pulled from the rubble of the house and laid out for burial beneath the bright, blank desert sky. We know that an Associated Press reporter on the scene saw the ruined house, and a photographer for Agence France Presse took the pictures of the bodies.”
“We know that two Iraqi police officials, Major Ali Ahmed and Colonel Farouq Hussein – both employed by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government – told Reuters that the 11 occupants of the house, including the five children, had been bound and shot in the head before the house was blown up,” Floyd added. “We know that the U.S.-backed Iraqi police told Reuters that an American helicopter landed on the roof in the early hours of the morning, then the house was blown up, and then the victims were discovered. We know that the U.S.-backed Iraqi police said that an autopsy performed on the bodies found that “all the victims had gunshot wounds to the head.” We know that the U.S.-backed Iraqi police said they found “spent American-issue cartridges in the rubble.”
The photographs, quite graphic, follow.
Press Accounts Suggest Possible Military ‘Cover-up’ in Ishagi Killings
Soldiers cleared in Ishaqi incident, Haditha investigation continues
