The US military is braced for a major scandal over the alleged slaying of Iraqi civilians by Marines in Haditha.

The charges are so serious they threaten to derail President George W. Bush's effort to rally support at home for an increasingly unpopular war.

And while the case has attracted little attention so far in Iraq, it could still enflame hostility to the US presence just as Iraq's new government is getting established, and complicate efforts by moderate Sunni Arab leaders to reach out to their community the bedrock of the insurgency.

US lawmakers have been told the criminal investigation will be finished in about 30 days. But a Pentagon official said investigators believe Marines are guilty of unprovoked murder in the deaths of about two dozen people at Haditha in November.

With a political storm brewing, the top US Marine, General Michael W. Hagee, is headed to Iraq to personally deliver the message that troops should use deadly force "only when justified, proportional and, most importantly, lawful."

Fresh photographic evidence seen by US investigators is believed to reveal that some of the 24 unarmed Iraqis killed in the Iraqi town of Haditha after an American died in a roadside bomb in November were in effect executed, it was reported on Saturday.

According to Congressional and defence officials quoted by the Los Angeles Times, the pictures show wounds to the upper bodies of the victims, who included several women and six children. Some were shot in the head and some in the back.

"There wasn't a gunfight, there were no pockmarked walls," the paper reports a congressional aide as saying. And it quotes a US Defence Department official who had been briefed on the contents of the photos as saying 'the wounds indicated execution-style' shootings.

The incident happened after a hidden bomb exploded as a US marine unit passed through Haditha, a city of about 90,000 people along the Euphrates River 225 kilometres northwest of Baghdad.

One marine, Miguel Terrazas, was killed. Two other marines were also wounded in the blast.

What happened next is the focus of the investigations. Eyewitnesses and human rights groups believe the marines swept through the town in a lust for revenge. The attack may have lasted for several hours. At the end of it, 24 Iraqi civilians had been killed. They included a 76-year-old amputee and a four-year-old boy. In one house an entire family, including seven children, were attacked with guns and grenades. Only a 13-year-old girl survived.

Haditha is not the only case pending: On Wednesday, the military announced an investigation into allegations that Marines killed a civilian near Fallujah on April 26 . The statement gave no further details except that "several service members" had been sent back to the United States "pending the results of the criminal investigation."

Last July, Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations, Samir al-Sumaidaie, accused the Marines of killing his 21-year-old cousin in cold blood during a search of his family's home in Haditha.

The military ordered a criminal investigation but the results have not been announced.

Together, the cases present the most serious challenge to the US handling of the Iraq war since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, which Bush cited Thursday as "the biggest mistake that's happened so far, at least from our country's involvement in Iraq."

Source: China Daily