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US OFFICIALS failed to investigate hundreds of reports
of abuse, torture, rape and murder in Iraq, according to classified
documents leaked to international media by WikiLeaks.

As
recently as last December, US authorities were given a video of Iraqi
soldiers executing a bound detainee, according to the documents released
by the whistleblowing website.

The leaks also indicate
that the number of Iraqi civilians killed is greater than the US
revealed during the Bush administration, according to The New York
Times. The Times does not report a precise number of civilian deaths but
lists more than 100,000 deaths overall in the five years to December
31, 2009.

The documents also include incidents of
mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by their own forces, with references to
at least six prisoners who had died in Iraqi custody, during the six
years covered by the documents, as well as hundreds of accounts of
beatings, burnings and lashings.

The New York Times,
Britain's The Guardian, Germany's Der Spiegel and France's Le Monde were
given advance copies by WikiLeaks of almost 400,000 documents generated
between 2004 and 2009 by US military units.

The US Defence
Department ''strongly'' condemned the unauthorised release of the
documents, said a spokesman,... >>>