BAGHDAD, Iraq – Two California soldiers shot to death in Iraq were murdered by Iraqi civil-defense officers patrolling with them, military investigators have found.
The deaths of Army Spc. Patrick R. McCaffrey Sr. and 1st Lt. Andre D. Tyson were originally attributed to an ambush during a patrol near Balad, Iraq, on June 22, 2004.
But the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command found that one or more of the Iraqis attached to the American soldiers on patrol fired at them, a military official said Tuesday.
It was unclear whether the investigators had established a motive or arrested any suspects.
McCaffrey, 34, and Tyson, 33, were members of the California National Guard. Both were assigned to the Army National Guard’s 579th Engineer Battalion, based in Petaluma, Calif.
In other developments Tuesday:
* A report on the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines has found that senior military leaders in Iraq failed to follow up on “red flags” that should have indicated problems and potential inaccuracies with the initial reports of the incident, according to the report’s summary.
After the incident, the Marines involved reported that the civilians were killed by a roadside bomb or in the crossfire of a battle between the Americans and insurgents.
A portion of the executive summary of the report, by Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell, was read to the Los Angeles Times by a Department of Defense official.
A separate investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service is expected to determine if criminal wrongdoing occurred.
* The Pentagon has notified about 21,000 Army soldiers and Marines that they are scheduled to be sent to Iraq late this year as part of the latest deployment rotation. Four major combat brigades from Texas, Alaska and Colorado are scheduled to replace troops returning home from the war, the Pentagon said. Thus, the announcement does not signal an increase in troop strength in Iraq.
* U.S. military officials said they had killed a senior member of al-Qaida in Iraq during an airstrike on Friday. Mansur Sulayman Mansur Khalif al-Mashadani, an Iraqi known as Sheik Mansur, was a “key leader” of al-Qaida in Iraq, military officials said.
* In Basra, a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a home for the elderly, killing five people and wounding 15, said Samarai.
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