Now only the pregnant mother, Anwar, her 13-year-old daughter are alive to tell how the bullets tore through the windscreen and how they screamed for the Americans to stop, but her plea fell on deaf ears, the Independent revealed the straight-to-the-heart story.

"We were calling out to them 'stop, stop, we are a family', but they kept on shooting…We never did anything to the Americans and they just killed us," Mrs. Adel spoke about the horrible incident, which occurred Saturday, August 9, at 9.30 at night, long before the start of the curfew at 11p.m.

The respected daily further said that doctors said the father and his children would have survived if they had received treatment quicker, but they were left to bleed to death because the Americans refused to allow anyone to take them to hospital.

"American soldiers were shooting in every direction. They just turned on the car and sprayed it with bullets. You can see the holes in the front passenger window and in the rear window. You can see the blood of the dead all over the grey, imitation velvet seat covers," the paper gave on-the-scene details.

Heartbreaking Moments

Anwar's brother tells us about the worst moments in her life, when he saw his heavily pregnant sister racing against time to save her blood and flesh.

"I saw my sister running towards me with her daughter in her arms and blood pouring from her," said Tha'er Jawad.

"She was crying out to me 'Help, help, go and help Adel'." I put them in my car and tried to drive to the car but the American soldiers pointed their guns at me and the people shouted out to me 'Stop! Stop! They will shoot!," he said, adding that Anwar had to leave in the car her injured daughters, 16-year-old Iaa and 13-year-old Haded, along with her husband, Adel, who was bleeding badly and groaning, to save her 8-year-old Mervet.

Her 18-year-old son, Haider, was already dead. A bullet went between his eyes.

"After a while the U.S. troops released Iaa and let her come to us," Jawad said. "But when they finally let us go to the hospital, Mervet died. The doctors checked her injuries and told us she would have lived if we had brought her sooner."

He continued: "At 10.45 we heard the Americans had taken Adel and his other girl to another hospital. We went there at six the next morning, when the curfew was lifted, and they told us they both died in the hospital.

"The doctors said they might have lived if they got there sooner: the main cause of death was bleeding. The Americans left them to bleed in the street for hours."

Eyewitnesses said that it has been always the case that panicked U.S. troops open fire randomly at Iraqi civilians, thinking that they were under attack.

The Independent gave a reminder of Sa'ad al-Azawi, an Iraqi Youngman who was driving his car with two of his colleagues. As they came across a U.S. checkpoint, they did not hear an order to stop as their stereo was turned up too loud. The U.S. soldiers, thinking they were under attack again, got panicked and opened fire.

Sa'ad al-Azawi, an eyewitness, said that the Americans further dragged Azawi's two colleagues out and beat them, still thinking they were resistance members.

And he tried to help the bleeding Youngman out of the charred car.

"The Americans did not let me," he said. "A soldier came over and told me 'Inside'. He pushed me, even though my eight-year-old daughter was with me. They didn't let us get the young guy's body out of the car until he looked like he had been cooked."

On Saturday, U.S. President George W. Bush declared in a radio address: "Life is returning to normal for the Iraqi people ... All Americans can be proud of what our military and provisional authorities have achieved in Iraq."

'Bring Us Home'

Meanwhile, an unprecedented internet campaign waged on the frontline and in the U.S. is exposing the real risks for troops in Iraq, noting that Iraq has turned into a second Vietnam for the U.S. troops who want to go home, The Observer reported Sunday.

"I want them to bring our troops home. I am appalled at Bush's policies. He has got us into a terrible mess," said Susan Schuman, whose son, Justin, is serving in the Iraqi town of Samarra, where U.S. troops are killed with grim regularity.

She lives in Shelburne Falls, a small town in Massachusetts, and says all her neighbors support her view.

"I don't know anyone around here who disagrees with me," she said.

Bush warned last June that the U.S. forces in Iraq face a future of "danger and sacrifice."

The U.S. soldiers themselves, through e-mails and chat rooms, paint a vivid picture of U.S. army life that is a world away from the sanitized official version, slamming the U.S. handling of postwar Iraq, the daily said.

"Somewhere down the line, we became an occupation force in eyes. We don't feel like heroes any more," Private Isaac Kindblade of the 671st Engineer Company said in an e-mail seen by The Observer.

"The rules of engagement are crippling. We are outnumbered. We are exhausted. We are in over our heads. The President says, "Bring 'em on." The generals say we don't need more troops. Well, they're not over here," he wrote.

Former colonel David Hackworth, who was the army's youngest colonel in the Vietnam War and one of its most decorated officers, said he receives almost 500 e-mails a day, many of them from soldiers serving in Iraq.

The paper further said that some veterans have begun to form organizations to campaign to bring the soldiers home and highlight their difficult conditions.

Erik Gustafson, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf war, has founded Veterans For Common Sense.

"There is an anger boiling under the surface now, and I, as a veteran, have a duty to speak because I am no longer subject to military discipline," the veteran said.

A recent email from Iraq passed to Gustafson, signed by "the Soldiers of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division," said simply: "Our men and women deserve to see their loved ones again and deserve to come home. Thank you for your attention."

Schuman too is planning to join members of a new group, Military Families Speak Out, who will travel to Washington to make their case for their sons, daughters, husbands and wives, to be brought home from Iraq.

At least 57 U.S. soldiers have been killed in resistance attacks, while another 60 have now died in non-combat incidents since the White House declared major combat operations in Iraq over on May 1, according to an AFP account.