US Edition 
Wikileaks: Iraq War Logs show US helicopter killed insurgents who had surrendered
US Apache helicopters killed insurgents who were trying to surrender, military logs on the Iraq War released by the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks have disclosed.
An American military legal adviser told helicopter crew that Iraqi men were valid targets as they could not surrender to aircraft, the documents show.
The Apache helicopter killed the two insurgents after being told that they were still legitimate targets even although they were offering to lay down their arms.
It is thought that the aircraft, Crazyhorse 18, was the same helicopter involved in the killing of two Reuters journalists later in the war.
According to the leaked account the insurgents jumped out of their truck after it came under fire from the Apache. “They came out wanting to surrender,” Crazyhorse 18 signalled.
An unnamed lawyer at the nearby Taji airbase gave them clearance to kill. “Lawyer states they cannot surrender to aircraft and are still valid targets,” the log entry says.
Just over 20 minutes later the crew filed a log entry: “Crazyhorse 18 reports engaged and destroyed shack with 2X AIF [anti-Iraq forces]. Battle damage assessment is shack/dump truck destroyed.”
The incident was disclosed in almost 400,000 Us military files leaked by Wikileaks to The Guardian, New York Times, Der Spiegel and Al-Jazeera.
Documents show that 109,000 Iraqis were killed from 2003 to 2009 – 60,000 of those were civilians.
More than 15,000 deaths had previously gone unrecorded. The Pentagon files also show that the US military gave a secret order not to investigate torture by Iraqi authorities discovered by American troops.