One report says they killed a guard as they entered.”The Americans searched the house completely, very roughly,” Sheikh Habib said. “It seems they thought Saddam Hussein was inside.”It appears the killings started as the troops were searching the building and as motorists approached the barbed wire which the soldiers had placed without warning across the road Witnesses said the first car contained at least two men. “The second contained two children about 10, their mother and their father who had been wounded in the Iran-Iraq war ­ he was a cripple,” a local shopkeeper told me “They all died The man’s legs were cut in half by the bullets,” he added. A third car then approached the Americans, who opened fire again. One of the occupants fled, but the other two remained in the vehicle and were killed.When another car arrived US troops riddled it with more bullets and it burst into flames. It is believed that two people were inside and both were burnt to death.

“The Americans didn’t try to help the civilians they had shot, not once,” a witness said. “They let the car burn and left the bodies where they lay, even the children. It was we who had to take them to the hospitals.”Yet again, false informers, ill-trained American soldiers who appeared to exercise no fire control and a lack of military planning has created a tragedy among the people the Americans claimed to be ‘liberating’ from Saddam Hussein only 15 weeks ago. Last night, there were reports from the southern city of Karbala that three men had been shot dead by American troops during a demonstration.
More from Robert Fisk.

Strolling along the Paris Plage the other evening, the splendid imitation beach that has been constructed along the right bank of the Seine in central Paris, I immediately wondered why our capital city couldn’t do the same. After all, Ken Livingstone, the London Mayor, is just as much an innovator as his opposite number in Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, and the two cities have similar weather. A few days later, therefore, I took a similar walk along the south bank of the Thames, from Westminster Bridge to London Bridge, to see whether such an idea might work here. The answer, I think, is not so much that it wouldn’t work, but that London doesn’t need it. From 20 July to 17 August, the road along the right bank of the Seine, which normally sends traffic swiftly through the centre of Paris, is closed.

The tarmac has been covered by a beach made out of 3,000 tons of sand. On top have been placed 300 deck chairs with 240 parasols.It’s hard to find an empty place. You lounge back and look across the river towards the left bank, lined as it is with fine 17th and 18th century terraces of houses as well as the grand Institut de France At certain points, Notre-Dame can be glimpsed. As well as this agreeable view, there is also plenty to do – a climbing wall for children, massages if you don’t mind passers-by watching, a lending library and bicycles for hire.