Allegedly, five Iraqi men, a taxi driver and four teenagers, were ordered out of their car and shot dead in the street principally by Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich. After their deaths, Lt. William T. Kallop, according to his statements to investigators, arrived on the scene. Kallop and others report receiving small-arms fire, which they attributed to a nearby house. Kallop gave the order "to take the house."[20] Nineteen of those killed were in three adjacent houses which U.S. Marines entered, throwing in grenades and shooting with automatic rifles.[21] According to Kallop,
"The Marines cleared it the way they had been trained to clear it, which is frags first. … It was clear just by the looks of the room that frags went in and then the house was prepped and sprayed like with a machine gun and then they went in. And by the looks of it, they just . . . they went in, cleared the room, everybody was down."[20]
On November 20, 2005 a Marine press release from Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi reported the deaths of a U.S. Marine and 15 civilians. It said that the death of the civilians was a consequence of a roadside bomb and Iraqi insurgents. The initial U.S. military statement read:
"A US marine and 15 civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha. Immediately following the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small arms fire. Iraqi army soldiers and Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another."[2][22]
Eman Waleed, a nine-year-old child who witnessed the incident, described the U.S. Marines entering their house. She said:
"I couldn't see their faces very well - only their guns sticking in to the doorway. I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny."[2]
The director of the local hospital in Haditha, Dr Wahid, said that the 24 bodies were brought in two American humvees [2] to the hospital around midnight on November 19. While the Marines claim that the victims had been killed by shrapnel from the roadside bomb and that the men "were saboteurs", Dr Wahid said that there were "no organs slashed by shrapnel in any of the bodies". He further claimed that it appeared that "the victims were shot in the head and chest from close range."[2]
Soon after the killings, the mayor of Haditha, Emad Jawad Hamza, led an angry delegation of elders up to the Haditha Dam Marine base allegedly complaining to the base captain.[2]
The Marine Corps paid $38,000 to the families of 15 of the dead civilians.[23].
