On this day in 2005, US Marines massacred 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha. Marines went house to house executing men, women, children as young as 1 yr-old & a 76 yr-old man in a wheelchair. The marines then urinated on the dead bodies. None of the Marines served jail time.

The massacre—which lasted 5 hours and involved two squads of Marines—was immediately followed by a cover-up. The Marines dropped the dead bodies off at a hospital, claiming they’d been killed in the roadside bombing.

Dr Wahid at Haditha hospital said that there were "no organs slashed by shrapnel in any of the bodies”, but instead "the victims were shot in the head and chest from close range." Yet, the US put out a false statement saying civilians were killed in a roadside bombing.

In March 2006, when allegations of the massacre first surfaced in the US media, the U.S. Marines dismissed the claims as insurgent propaganda.

The massacre would have been successfully covered up if not for an Iraqi journalist student & activist named Taher Thabet al-Hadithi. Taher shot a video the day after showing the bloodstained and bullet-riddled houses where the massacre had occurred.

12-yr-old Safa Younis appears on video saying she was in one of three houses where troops came in & indiscriminately killed family members. "They knocked at our front door & my father went to open it. They shot him dead from behind the door & then they shot him again," she said.

"Then one American soldier came in and shot at us all. Safa survived only due to her mother's blood spilling onto her, making her look dead when she fell limp & fainted.