The Pentagon said yesterday it was pursuing a new war crimes investigation into five American soldiers, alleged to have raped and murdered a young Iraqi woman and killed three members of her family in their home.
Yesterday's investigation is the fourth alleged war crime in Iraq to come to light in a matter of weeks, putting the Pentagon's legal system to its most stringent test since the Vietnam war.
In the latest suspected war crime, it is believed the woman's body was burnt, and that a child was killed along with two other Iraqi adults in the family's home.
The alleged rape and murders are believed to have taken place in the town of Mahmoudiya, about 18 miles south of Baghdad several months ago. The events were brought to the attention of the authorities on June 23 by two soldiers who saw blood on their comrades' clothing and heard them talking about the incident.
A day later the army launched an investigation. "A preliminary inquiry conducted by MND-Baghdad found sufficient information existed to recommend a criminal investigation into the incident," according to a statement released yesterday.
Military officials in Baghdad and Washington gave only sparse details of the incident. However, it is believed that at least one of the soldiers had confessed to involvement in the incident and four had had their weapons taken away and were confined to barracks. All are believed to be enlisted men.
The investigation, ordered by Major General James Thurman, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, was announced at a time when the Pentagon is under severe pressure to improve the image of its troops - and its judicial system - following a series of high-profile atrocities against Iraqi civilians.
The most damaging of these are the events in the town of Haditha last November in which US Marines are accused of killing two dozen Iraqi civilians in retaliation for the death of one of their own in a roadside bombing. Separate Marine units attempted to cover up the deaths.
The killings, which have been widely likened to the notorious My Lai massacre at Vietnam, might never have come to light if not for a report in Time magazine.
More recent episodes have also exposed efforts by soldiers to cover up crimes against Iraqi civilians. Last week four enlisted men were charged with killing three Iraqi men at a former chemical plant and threatening a fellow soldier if he reported the deaths.
Meanwhile, seven Marines and one sailor were charged with killing a disabled Iraqi man in the town of Hamdania, west of Baghdad, placing a shovel near his body to suggest he had been planting a makeshift bomb.
On this occasion, however, the Pentagon appears to have responded with almost unprecedented speed, announcing it had launched an investigation within days of the incident.
"They are probably getting better at recognising that one part of transparency is timely transparency," said Eugene Fidell, a military lawyer in Washington.
The soldiers in the most recent investigation are believed to be members of the 502nd Infantry Regiment, based in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Two weeks ago two soldiers from the same platoon were kidnapped by an al-Qaida affiliate at a checkpoint in the town of Yusufiya, 12 miles south of the Iraqi capital. Several days later, their brutalised and beheaded corpses, rigged with explosives, were discovered on waste ground near an electrical plant in the town.
Soldiers from the unit have been undergoing stress counselling since the capture and killing of the two men.
However, a military official told Associated Press news agency that the killing appeared to be unrelated to the kidnappings, describing them as a "crime of opportunity". The soldiers had not been under attack and had noticed the woman on previous patrols.
Until the two soldiers came forward, officers had believed the family's death was due to sectarian violence in the town.