Four U.S. soldiers were charged with the rape and murder of an Iraqi woman and the killing of her three family members, the U.S. military said on Sunday.

Earlier, the U.S. military said that three were charged with rape and murder, but later corrected the number into four.
A fifth soldier was charged with dereliction of duty for failing to report the case, but is not believed to have participated in it directly, said the U.S. military in a statement.

The statement did not reveal the names of the accused.

The five soldiers will face further investigation and a hearing which will decide whether there is enough evidence to put them on trial.

Last week, an ex-soldier, Steven D. Green, was also charged with rape and murder in a U.S. civilian court over the case. He pled not guilty.

The charges came after the U.S. military investigated into allegations that soldiers from the U.S. 101st Airborne Division raped a young Iraqi woman and killed her and her three family members and then burned their bodies in a bid to destroy evidence in Mahmudiya village, south of Baghdad, in March.

Ex-US soldier charged in rape case has personality disorder: report

An ex-U.S. soldier accused of raping a young Iraqi woman and killing 4 family members including her, is among many U.S. troops in Iraq with mental or personality disorders, The CNN Television reported Thursday.

Quoting military documents, the report said Steven D. Green was discharged from the military and sent home in May due to some "anti-social personality disorder," before the rape and killing incident was exposed in June.

Several other U.S. soldiers involved in the case have been locked up inside a military base in Iraq, the U.S. military said. Green, 21, was charged in a court in North Carolina Monday with rape and murder charges and was then transferred to Kentucky for a trial that begins next Monday. He could face death penalty if convicted.

Prosecutors said Green and several other soldiers targeted a young Iraqi woman after spotting her at a traffic checkpoint near Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad.

On March 12, Green and complice allegedly broke into the woman's house. He first killed her parents and a younger sister, who is about 5 years old, and then raped and murdered the woman. Although the revelation of Green's personality disorder won't help him to get away with the punishment, it exposes a prevailing cause for war atrocities by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, -- the mental and personality disorder.

In the area southwest of Baghdad where Green was once stationed, over 40 percent of the nearly 1,000 U.S. soldiers there have been treated for mental or emotional anxiety. Green was apparently one of them.

Editor: Yan