Probe of Iraq taxi slayings hits dead end
TIKRIT, Iraq -- The U.S. military closed an investigation into the January killings of four Iraqis whose deaths were blamed on American troops, saying it couldn't find the culprits, the Army said Saturday.
No one ever claimed responsibility for the Jan. 3 deaths of the Iraqis, among them a woman and a 7-year-old boy, who were killed by heavy machine gun fire on a taxi. The taxi driver, the sole survivor, blamed American troops.
Two investigations were conducted, the latter a formal inquiry ordered by U.S. military commanders in Baghdad late last month and conducted by the Tikrit-based 4th Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment.
"The investigation couldn't determine if it was military or a private security firm who killed the people in the car," Division spokeswoman Maj. Josslyn Aberle told The Associated Press on Saturday.
The taxi driver, Ibrahim Allawi, told The Associated Press after the shooting that he had just passed a convoy of four Humvees on a road leading to the main highway through Tikrit when machine gun fire struck his cab.
The fire came from the lead vehicle in the convoy, said Allawi, who was wounded.
Aberle said the large volume of traffic that passed through Tikrit made it "almost impossible" for the 4th Division to determine who killed the people, but she said no forces from her division were responsible for the deaths.
Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the division commander, has repeatedly said his troops were not involved.
However, Lt. Col. Steve Russell, a battalion commander, said he doubted insurgents were responsible because of the caliber of weapons used in the shooting.
Aberle said she did not know if U.S. forces operating outside the 4th Infantry Division's area, which stretches from just north of Baghdad up to near Kirkuk, had been formally questioned over the killings.
The killings enraged people in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's former hometown and until recently a hotbed of anti-American attacks within the volatile Sunni Triangle.
