'Life over' for tragic family

An Iraqi mother in a van fired on by US soldiers says
she saw her two young daughters decapitated in the incident
that also killed her son and eight other members of her
family.
The children's father, who was also in the van, said US
soldiers fired on them as they fled towards a checkpoint
because they thought a leaflet dropped by US helicopters told
them to "be safe", and they believed that meant getting out
of their village to Karbala.
Bakhat Hassan - who lost his daughters aged 2 and 5,
his 3 year old son, his parents, 2 older brothers, their
wives and two nieces aged 12 and 15, in the incident- said
US soldiers at an earlier checkpoint had waved them through.

As they approached another checkpoint 40km south of
Karbala, they waved again at the American soldiers.
"We were thinking these Americans want us to be safe,"
Mr Hassan said through an army translator.
The soldiers didn't wave back. They fired.
"I saw the heads of my two little girls come off,"
Hassan's heavily pregnant wife, Lamea, 36, said numbly. She repeated herself in a flat, even voice: "My girls-I watched their heads come off their bodies. My son is dead.
US officials originally gave the death toll from the incident as seven, but reporters at the scene placed it at ten. Mr Hassan's father died later at the army hospital. Us officials said the soldiers who opened fire were following orders not to let vehicles approach checkpoints. On Saturday, a suicide bomber had killed four US soldiers outside Najaf.
Details from interviews with survivors of the incident tell a destressing tale of a family fleeing towards what they thought would be safety, tragically misunderstanding instructions. Mr Hassan's father, in his 60's, wore his best clothes for the trip through the American lines: a pinstriped suit.
"To look American," Mr Hassan said.
On March 16, Mr Hassan and his family began to harvest tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and eggplant. It was a healthy crop and they expected a good year.
"We had hope," he said. "But then you Americans came to bring us democracy and our hope ended."
Lamea is nine months pregnant. "IT would be better not to have the baby," she said. "Our lives are over."