In the fading light of dusk on January 18, 2005, a group of US soldiers on routine foot patrol spotted an Opel saloon approaching them along a boulevard in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar.
According to the military documents, the soldiers from Apache Company tried to stop the car using ‘visual signals’.
Their warnings were either ignored, misunder-stood or went unseen. In any case, the soldiers panicked.
Orphaned: US soldiers with two of Hussein and Kamila Hassan's children after the shooting
By the time the car was around 50 yards away ‘the patrol engaged the vehicle’ – killing an innocent couple, Hussein and Kamila Hassan.
Crammed into the back, were the couple’s five children and their cousin, who, according to the US log of the incident, ‘were all unharmed’.
That, however, was not the case. As Channel 4’s Dispatches programme discovered, the Hassans’ 11-year-old son Rakan had been shot in the stomach, the bullet exiting through his spine.
He was paralysed. A philanthropist later paid for him to be treated in the US, but he was killed in a bombing when he returned home.
The shooting at Tal Afar was captured by photographer Chris Hondros, who heard the Hassans’ 14-year-old daughter cry: ‘Why did they shoot us? We have no weapons. We were just going home.’
Mr Hondros said that warning shots were quickly followed by a ‘cacophony of fire, shots rattling off in a chaotic overlapping din’.
He added: ‘The sound of children crying came from the car.’
Dispatches found that the orphans were given a £4,782 ‘condolence package’ by the US military: £1,594 for each parent and £1,594 for the car.
The soldiers were cleared of wrongdoing by an 'investigation.'
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