Hamdaniya, April 2006

SAN DIEGO — The Marine Corps will file criminal charges, including some murder counts, against several enlisted Marines and a Navy corpsman in the fatal shooting of an Iraqi civilian in April, officials close to the investigation said Thursday.

The Marines and the corpsman were brought back to Camp Pendleton in recent weeks as the Naval Criminal Investigative Service looked into the April 26 shooting of a man in Hamandiya.

The troops, with the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, may also have attempted a cover-up by planting evidence near the body to suggest that the man was an armed insurgent digging a hole to plant a roadside bomb.

The decision to file charges comes amid two investigations of allegations in a separate case that Marines killed at least 24 Iraqi civilians, including women and children, Nov. 19 in Haditha, west of Baghdad.