US troops using 'excess force' in Iraq: HRW

The group, Human Rights Watch, said it found no concrete evidence to support US assertions that troops returned precision fire on gunmen in the crowd who shot first.

Human Rights Watch investigators who examined the sites of the shootings said they did not find conclusive evidence of bullet damage on buildings used as a base by US troops. Despite detailed claims of shooting, there was little to suggest US troops had been fired upon, according to the report, issued Tuesday.

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By contrast, buildings facing the US positions were pocked with more than 100 bullet holes. The damage was "wider and more sustained than would have been caused by 'precision fire'.

The evidence suggested soldiers of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade responded to a perceived threat with disproportionate force.

The group called for a full US investigation into the April 28 and April 30 shootings, asking that participants be held accountable for violations of international humanitarian law.

A US Central Command spokesman in Tampa, Florida, said Wednesday that military officials were still considering whether to respond to the New York-based group's report.

Capt. John Morgan, a US military spokesman in Baghdad, said the Army would "take appropriate measures" based on the results of its own investigation, which he said was under way.

Since the April shootings, Fallujah, about 60 km west of Baghdad, has become synonymous with resistance to the US-led occupation of Iraq. Subsequent ambushes troops have killed four US soldiers and wounded 21.

The conservative Sunni Muslim city of 300,000, which gave key support to Saddam Hussein's regime, has seen three separate US Army occupation forces attempting to quell anti-American attacks with a mixture of combat raids and humanitarian aid. The 82nd Airborne was replaced by the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment after the shootings. When the attacks continued, a large portion of the 3rd Infantry Division was sent in weeks ago to quell the city and the surrounding area along the banks of the Euphrates River.

Human Rights Watch said the original order to police Fallujah with combat troops of the 82nd, a paratroop unit whose soldiers had come straight from battle, was a "recipe for disaster." The troops were unprepared and ill-equipped for the post-conflict job of dealing with hostile civilian crowds. They lacked translators, law enforcement training and non-lethal crowd control tools, the report states.

Interviews by the group's investigators with Iraqi witnesses and US soldiers directly involved in the April 28 incident produced sharply differing accounts.

Although it was dark, soldiers said they returned fire for about 30 seconds with rifles and 7.62 mm machine guns after seeing men shooting from behind a taxi and on rooftops, and from four or five armed men mingling with a crowd of about 200 protesters. Protesters said they were attacked without provocation by U.S. troops who fired automatic weapons for 10 minutes.

The Human Rights Watch report said local resentment was evident the day US forces entered Fallujah, on April 23. Iraqi witnesses of the protests denied that shots had been fired at US troops, but that some had thrown rocks at the soldiers and their vehicles. The report says it is still possible that agents in the crowd fired at US troops, despite the lack of witness accounts and ballistic evidence.