By Megan K. Stack and Raheem Salman,Los Angeles Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The killing began shortly after sunrise on a November day in Haditha. As a U.S. patrol rolled through the sleepy riverside city, a homemade bomb exploded beneath the belly of a Humvee, rocking the town.

“The Americans who were in the first vehicle came back to the damaged car. They started to scream and shout,” said a graying shopkeeper who would only give his name as Abu Mukarram. He said he watched the scene unfold from his bedroom window. “After some minutes, everything was quiet. During this quiet, no bullets were shot. They were moments of expectation.”

Ten minutes passed in silence. Then Abu Mukarram heard the crack of the first bullets.

Planted by insurgents at the edge of the road, the bomb had killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, a 20-year-old Marine from El Paso, Texas.

According to survivors and witnesses, Terrazas’ death drove some of the soldiers into a murderous rage.

Survivors say that furious Marines rampaged through a quiet street, bursting into homes and gunning down Iraqi civilians – including children, women and an old man in a wheelchair. Their account appears to match details emerging from a military investigation into the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians on the morning of Nov 19.

In the United States, the killings are joining the Abu Ghraib

torture case as an emblem of how the American military in Iraq can come unhinged amid mistrust, fear and bloody violence. President Bush said Wednesday he was “troubled” by news reports of the killings.

“I am mindful that there is a thorough investigation going on. If, in fact, the laws were broken, there will be punishment,” Bush said in his first public comments on the incident, remarks during a photo session with President Paul Kagame of Rwanda.

In Iraq, by contrast, word of the deaths has spread slowly out of Haditha these last months, blurring into the steady background noise of daily horrors. To a public that’s endured more than three years of combat, rampant bombings and executions, news of two dozen more lost lives grabbed few headlines.

Sliced in half by the waters of the Tigris and nestled in fruit groves, Haditha is a quiet farming community of 90,000 people in the midst of barren western desert. Farmers tend date orchards, and raise oranges and apples in the shadow of the palms.

This account of the Nov. 19 killings comes from witness and survivor interviews conducted by Iraqi reporters for the Los Angeles Times in Baghdad and Haditha. The Iraqi reporter who traveled to Haditha cannot be named for security reasons.

After the roadside bombing, the Marines arrived first at the door of Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali, an 89-year-old retiree who had been using a wheelchair after his left leg was amputated. They shot him dead, then turned their guns on his three sons and their families, survivors said.

Waleed Abdul Hameed, a 48-year-old worker in Al Anbar religious affairs office, was among the first of the family members to be gunned

down. His 9-year-old daughter, Eman, who survived, said she was still

wearing her pajamas when the soldiers arrived. Her brother, Abdul

Rahman, 7, also survived, and said he hid his face with a blanket when

his father was shot.

A few minutes later, the boy saw his mother fall to the ground,

dying.

“I saw her while she was crying,” he said. “She fell down on the

floor bleeding.” Speaking days ago in Haditha, months after the

attacks, the boy broke down crying, covered his eyes with his hands,

and began to mutter to himself. At his side, his older sister began to

speak again. She described how the two siblings waited for help, the

bodies of their dead family members sprawled on the floor.

“We were scared,” she said. “I tried to hide under the bed.”

With shrapnel injuries to her legs, she lay still for two hours.

Around her, seven family members died in the shootout: Ali and his

wife; their three sons and one daughter-in-law; and their 5-year-old

grandson. Only one of the household’s adults lived through that

morning.

In the first moments of shooting, Hibba Abdullah snatched her

5-month-old niece off the floor. The baby’s mother had dropped her in

shock after seeing her husband gunned down. Clutching the child,

Abdullah scampered out of the house. She and the baby girl, Asia, both

survived.

The baby’s mother “completely collapsed when they killed her

husband in front of her,” she said. “I ran away carrying Asia (the

baby) outside the house, but when the Americans returned they killed

Asma, the mother of the child.” Abdullah’s 39-year-old husband also

slipped out of the house and ran to warn his nearby cousins about the

killings. But he crossed paths with the Marines on his way back home;

he died of gunshot wounds to the shoulder and head, his wife said.

The Marines stopped next at the home of 45-year-old customs

official Younis Salim Nusaif and his wife, Aida Yassin. The mother of

six children, 42-year-old Yassin was lying in bed that morning,

recovering from a recent operation. While she recuperated, her sister

had come to stay with the family and help with the housework.

Everybody was at home when the gunmen arrived. And except for one

12-year-old daughter, the entire family was wiped out. Four girls and

one boy, their ages ranging from 4 to 15, were shot dead by the

Marines, neighbors and the surviving child said.

Safa Younis Salim, a schoolgirl, said she lay on the ground,

covered with her sister’s blood, and pretended to be dead while her

family died around her. Her sister’s blood spurted fast; it was like a

water tap, she said.

During a meeting with a reporter, Salim was withdrawn and reluctant

to talk about the attack. Only after her relatives coaxed her to speak

did she describe how she played dead to stay alive that morning. The

Marines yelled in the faces of her family members before they shot

them, she said. After they were shot, they kicked them and hit the

bodies with their guns.

“I feel sorry. I was wishing to be alive,” said Salim. “Now I

wish I had died with them.”

The Marines moved along the street. Next, they shotdead four

brothers, whose ages ranged from 20 to 38 years old, their mother

said. At that home, the soldiers herded the women outside, pointed

guns at their heads and ordered them to stay still, according to the

woman, who did not want her own name published.

The men were grouped inside. Then gunfire rang out.

“After some minutes the soldiers ran out and left the house,” she

said. The women went inside, and found the men dead.

“They were shot in different parts of their bodies,” she said.

The last five men to die came upon the scene by chance. Four

university students, two of them brothers, and their taxi driver drove

too close to the spot where the families had been killed. Witnesses

said the Marines stopped their car, ordered them to get out and shot

them dead.

When the killing was over, the Americans continued to guard the

street, keeping relatives away, townspeople said. Eventually, the

Marines took the bodies to the hospital, a medical source in Haditha

said.

Since that November day, the people of Haditha have been haunted.

The survivors described sinking into depression.

Much of the talk in town has centered on the U.S. offer of $2,500

in compensation for each death. Some of the families say they turned

down the money. In March, the townspeople said, American investigators

arrived. They brought cameras to record the witnesses, and toys for

the surviving children.

A Times staff writer in Haditha and staff writer Zainab Hussein in

Baghdad contributed to this report.

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