Iraq to reopen probe into U.S. executions detailed by WikiLeaks

Iraqi officials said Friday that following revleations by anti-secrecy website Wikileaks, they plan to reopen an investigation into a series of shootings allegedly carried out by U.S. soldiers in 2006.

According to a diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, U.S. troops massacred an Iraqi family in the town of Ishaqi in 2006, handcuffing and then shooting 11 people in the head including a woman in her 70s and five children ages five and under.

McClatchy later reported that the soldiers then called in an air strike on the house to cover up evidence of the killings.

The latest account differs sharply from an official version of the 2006 incident, which indicated that coalition forces captured an al Qaeda in Iraq operative in the house, which was destroyed in a firefight.

The WikiLeaks cable, however, corroborates accounts by Ishaqi townspeople and includes questions about the incident by Philip Alston, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

It adds that autopsies performed in Tikrit on bodies pulled from the wreckage of the farmhouse indicated that all of the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head.

The Pentagon has since said that none of the soldiers did anything wrong.

David Ferguson contributed to this report.