Haditha massacre
incident in which 24 unarmed Iraqi men, women and children were killed by a group of US Marines
The Haditha massacre was a series of killings on November 19, 2005, in which a group of United States Marines killed 25 unarmed Iraqi civilians. It occurred in the city of Haditha in Iraq's western province of Al Anbar. Among the dead were men, women, elderly people and children as young as one year old, who were shot multiple times at close range. The massacre took place after an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded near a convoy, killing a lance corporal and severely injuring two other marines. In retaliation, the marines killed five men from a nearby taxicab and 19 others inside four nearby homes.
An initial Marine Corps communique falsely reported that 15 civilians were killed by the bomb's blast and that eight insurgents were subsequently killed by the marines. A Time magazine reporter's questions prompted the US military to open an investigation into the incident. The investigation found evidence that "supports accusations that U.S. Marines deliberately shot civilians", according to an anonymous Pentagon official. Three officers were officially reprimanded for failing to properly initially report and investigate the killings. On December 21, 2006, eight marines from 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines were charged in connection with the incident.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Haditha massacre” is incident in which 24 unarmed Iraqi men, women and children were killed by a group of US Marines. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Haditha, massacre and incident, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q981327. Authority coordinates are 34.140, 42.378. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2005 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Haditha massacre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.