Fallujah killings of April 2003
The Fallujah massacres of April 2003 began when United States Army soldiers from the American 1st Battalion, 325th Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division fired into a crowd of Iraqi civilians who were protesting their presence at a school in the city of Fallujah, killing 17 protestors.According to locals, at this point the United States soldiers fired upon the unarmed crowd, killing 17 and wounding more than 70 of the protesters.Human Rights Watch inspected the area after the incident, and were unable to conclusively identify evidence of bullet damage to the building where U.S. forces were based.The 3rd Cavalry was significantly smaller in number and chose not to occupy the same schoolhouse where the shooting had occurred two days earlier.[6] Israeli Home Front Defense Minister Matan Vilnai claimed all of the dead were "involved in the fighting".