Slain Iraqi girl feared soldiers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Fifteen-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza was afraid, her mother confided to a neighbor.

The pretty girl had attracted the unwelcome attention of U.S. soldiers working at a checkpoint that she had to pass through almost daily in their village in the south-central city of Al-Mahmudiyah, her mother told the neighbor.

Abeer told her mother again and again in her last days that the soldiers had made advances toward her, a neighbor, Omar Janabi, said over the weekend, recounting a conversation he said he had with the girl's mother, Fakhriyah, on March 10.

Fakhriyah feared the Americans might come for her daughter at night, at their home. She asked her neighbor if Abeer might sleep at his house, with the women there.

Janabi said he agreed.

Then, ``I tried to reassure her, remove some of her fear,'' Janabi said. ``I told her, the Americans would not do such a thing.''