Pentagon: Probe Backs Haditha Charges

(CBS/AP)  Evidence collected on the deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha supports accusations that U.S. Marines deliberately shot the civilians, including unarmed women and children, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.

Agents of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service have completed their initial work on the incident last November, but may be asked to probe further as Marine Corps and Navy prosecutors review the evidence and determine whether to recommend criminal charges, according to two Pentagon officials who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity.

The decision on whether to press criminal charges ultimately will be made by the commander of the accused Marines' parent unit, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton, Calif. That currently is Lt. Gen. John Sattler, but he is scheduled to move to a Pentagon assignment soon; his successor will be Lt. Gen. James Mattis.

Investigators conducted a wide range of interviews but did not obtain permission to exhume the bodies of the 24 who were killed, one official said.

NCIS officials who spoke to CBS News said they still have several weeks of work to do. Evidence has been gathered from photos taken by the Marines themselves and from forensic evidence, "as much as you can get five months after the fact."

The officials said NCIS has conducted "tons and tons of interviews" — everyone in the Marine unit, people who were there, people who ran away. Some 45 to 50 NCIS agents have been involved in the investigation.

Meanwhile, in ongoing violence in Iraq, 14 young Iraqis were killed when explosions hit two soccer fields in Baghdad on Wednesday. Eleven were killed by hidden, homemade bombs in the western part of the city. Police said the dead ranged in age from 15 to 25. Fourteen others were injured in the blast.

In a separate incident, police reported three people under the age of 15 were killed when a mortar shell hit a soccer field in a residential neighborhood.

In other developments:

President Jalal Talabani said Wednesday that Iraqi forces will assume security duties for the whole country by the end of the year, taking over responsibility from U.S. and other foreign troops now policing all but one of the 18 provinces.

The U.S. military is moving at least 3,700 soldiers from the northern city of Mosul to the capital for a planned operation to wrest control of Baghdad from Shiite militias, Sunni insurgents, kidnap gangs, rogue police and freelance gunmen.

Britain is likely to hand over control of the southern Iraqi city of Basra to local security forces early next year, Britain's top military official said Wednesday.

A company hired by Halliburton Co. to ship military cargo to Iraq has paid the government $4 million to settle allegations it inflated invoices by adding a "war risk surcharge," the Justice Department said Wednesday. The invoices from Houston-based EGL Inc., operating as Eagle Global Logistics, were for shipments of military goods sent from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Iraq between November 2003 and July 2004.

A nephew of Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., was killed in combat on July 29 in Iraq, the senator's office said Tuesday. Marine Cpl. Phillip E. Baucus, 28, died in the province of Al Anbar.

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