The killing of a pregnant Iraqi, apparently by US troops, as she was rushing to a hospital threw an intense spotlight on the troubling issue of Iraqi civilian deaths.

Iraqi police and witnesses said the troops gunned down the woman and her cousin in their car. The US military said the car entered a clearly marked prohibited area but failed to stop despite repeated signals. Shots were fired to disable the vehicle, it said.

More than 4,000 Iraqis many of them civilians have been killed in war-related violence this year, including at least 936 in May alone, according to a media count. That makes May the second deadliest month for Iraqis over the past year. Only March recorded more fatalities.

On Tuesday Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, a 35-year-old pregnant woman, and her cousin Saliha Mohammed Hassan, 57, became the latest victims of what many Iraqis think is the American troops' disregard for life.

Jassim's brother, Khalid Nisaif Jassim, said he was speeding to get to a maternity hospital in Samarra when shots were fired at his car. He said the shooting happened on a side road that the US military closed two weeks ago. News of the closure, he said, was slow to reach the rural area just outside Samarra where his family lives.

The cousins' bodies were taken to Samarra General Hospital, where relatives said doctors struggled to save Jassim's baby but failed.

The US military said its forces "later received reports from Iraqi police that two women had died from gunshot wounds at the Samarra Hospital and one of the females may have been pregnant.

"The incident is under investigation," it added.

Nabiha Nisaif Jassim is survived by a husband, 36-year-old Hussein Tawfeeq, and two children, Hashimayah, 2, and Ali, 1. Tawfeeq was waiting at the hospital for his wife when she was shot. "May God take revenge on the Americans and those who brought them here," said Jassim's brother.

Source: China Daily