  A young boy riding a bicycle looks across at a 
 newly-erected warning sign put up Wednesday, May 31, 2006 on a road around 
 100 metres from the maternity hospital which Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, 35, a 
 pregnant woman and her 57-year-old cousin Saliha Mohammed Hassan, were 
 driving to for Jassim to give birth when they were killed in Samarra, Iraq 
 Tuesday, May 30, 2006. US forces apparently shot to death two Iraqi women, 
 one of them pregnant, when they fired at a vehicle that failed to stop at 
 an observation post in the town, Iraqi officials and relatives said. 
 [AP] | 
US forces killed two Iraqi women - one of them about to give 
birth - when the troops shot at a car that failed to stop at an observation 
post in a city north of Baghdad, Iraqi officials and relatives said Wednesday. 
Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, 35, was being raced to the maternity hospital in Samarra 
by her brother when the shooting occurred Tuesday. 
Jassim, the mother of two children, and her 
57-year-old cousin, Saliha Mohammed Hassan, were killed by the US forces, 
according to police Capt. Laith Mohammed and witnesses. 
The US military said coalition troops fired at a car after it entered a 
clearly marked prohibited area near an observation post but failed to stop 
despite repeated visual and auditory warnings. 
"Shots were fired to disable the vehicle," the military said in a statement 
e-mailed to The Associated Press. "Coalition forces later received reports from 
Iraqi police that two women had died from gunshot wounds ... and one of the 
females may have been pregnant." 
Jassim's brother, who was wounded by broken glass, said he did not see any 
warnings as he sped his sister to the hospital. Her husband was waiting for her 
there. 
"I was driving my car at full speed because I did not see any sign or warning 
from the Americans. It was not until they shot the two bullets that killed my 
sister and cousin that I stopped," he said. "God take revenge on the Americans 
and those who brought them here. They have no regard for our lives." 
He said doctors tried but failed to save the baby after his sister was 
brought to the hospital. 
The shooting deaths occurred in the wake of an investigation into allegations 
that US Marines killed unarmed civilians in the western city of Haditha. 
The US military said the incident in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, was 
being investigated. The city is in the heart of the so-called Sunni Triangle and 
has in the past seen heavy insurgent activity. 
"The loss of life is regrettable and coalition forces go to great lengths to 
prevent them," the military said. 
The women's bodies were wrapped in sheets and lying on stretchers outside the 
Samarra General Hospital before being taken to the morgue, while residents 
pointed to bullet holes on the windshield of a car and a pool of blood on the 
seat. 
Khalid Nisaif Jassim, the pregnant woman's brother, said American forces had 
blocked off the side road only two weeks ago and news about the observation post 
had been slow to filter out to rural areas. 
He said the killings, like those in Haditha, were examples of random killings 
faced by Iraqis every day. 
The killings at Haditha, a city that has been plagued by insurgents, came 
after a bomb rocked a military convoy on Nov. 19, killing a Marine. Rep. John 
Murtha (news, bio, voting record), D-Pa., a decorated war veteran who has been 
briefed by military officials, has said Marines shot and killed unarmed 
civilians in a taxi at the scene and went into two homes and shot others. 
Military investigators have evidence that points toward unprovoked murders by 
Marines, a senior defense official said last week. 
In his first public comments on the incident, President Bush said he was 
troubled by the allegations, and that, "If in fact laws were broken, there will 
be punishment." 
Former Iraqi Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi told the BBC that the 
allegations have "created a feeling of great shock and sadness and I believe 
that if what is alleged is true - and I have no reason to believe it's 
not - then I think something very drastic has to be done." 
"There must be a level of discipline imposed on the American troops and 
change of mentality which seems to think that Iraqi lives are expendable," said 
Pachachi, a member of parliament. 
If confirmed as unjustified killings, the episode could be the most serious 
case of criminal misconduct by US troops during three years of combat in Iraq. 
Until now the most infamous occurrence was the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse 
involving Army soldiers, which came to light in April 2004 and which Bush said 
he considered to be the worst U.S. mistake of the entire war. 
Once the military investigation is completed, perhaps in June, it will be up 
to a senior Marine commander in Iraq to decide whether to press charges of 
murder or other violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. 
The incident has sparked two investigations - one into the deadly 
encounter itself and another into whether it was the subject of a cover-up. The 
Marine Corps had initially attributed 15 civilian deaths to the car bombing and 
a firefight with insurgents, eight of whom the Marines reported had been killed. 
"People in Samarra are very angry with the Americans not only because of 
Haditha case but because the Americans kill people randomly specially recently," 
Khalid Nisaif Jassim said.