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US Airstrike Kills at Least 11 in Iraq    [

    Helicopter Gunfire Kills Iraqi Civilians, Days After Sadr City Battle
    By Andrew E. Kramer
    The New York Times

    Wednesday 24 October 2007

    Baghdad - Gunfire from an American helicopter killed 11 people, including women and children, after it came under fire north of Baghdad on Tuesday, according to a statement by the military. The episode was the second this week in which multiple Iraqi deaths resulted from a United States combat action.

    The Iraqi police and witnesses put the toll higher, at 16 dead, and recounted a confusing scene in which local people were trying to help a wounded man who was apparently an insurgent as an American helicopter buzzed overhead.

    According to Mohanad Hamid Muhsin, a 14-year-old who was wounded in the leg, the insurgent fired a machine gun at a helicopter around sunrise in a rural area near the city of Tikrit. The helicopter unleashed a barrage of gunfire in return, hitting the man who had fired the machine gun, he said.

    "The locals went to check if he was dead and gathered around him," Mohanad said of the insurgent, "but the helicopter opened fire again and killed some of the locals and wounded others." When another group tried to carry the wounded and dead to houses to provide first aid, Mohanad said, the helicopter shot at four houses, killing and wounding more people.

    In its statement, the United States military said that "a known member of an I.E.D. cell was among the 11 killed during the multiple engagements," using the abbreviation for improvised explosive device.

    The statement said an additional four "military-age males" were among the dead and said that five women and one child were also killed. The statement said the helicopter had been fired at from a house.

    "I lost two of my brothers and my sister, who was a college student," Mohanad said in a telephone interview from a hospital in Tikrit where the wounded were taken.

    A local police official, meanwhile, said that 16 people, including six women and three children, were killed and that an additional 14 were wounded.

    The shooting took place two days after American soldiers killed 49 people in a gun battle on Sunday in Sadr City, the sprawling Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. The military said no civilians were killed, while a Shiite citizens' council and other Shiite groups said innocent bystanders died. On Monday, Iraqi government and American military officials agreed to form a joint committee to investigate.

    Also Tuesday, Sunni tribal sheiks who have allied with the United States played host to an improbable military parade, with a band and soldiers in spit-shined boots, down a main street in the city of Ramadi in Anbar Province, though with an extensive American military presence in the area.

    The parade, which was led by children waving flowers and Iraqi flags, would have been unthinkable amid the insurgent violence in Ramadi a year ago, American commanders who attended said.

    The sheiks' movement, the Anbar Awakening Council, has used tribal ties to draw former insurgents into the government police force, while helping United States soldiers identify remaining militants. In Ramadi, United States patrols have not been targeted in the city since May, American commanders said.

    The parade was a response to one held last year in Ramadi by the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an insurgent group linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American intelligence officials say has foreign leadership.

    The parade on Tuesday formally commemorated the end of the 40-day period of mourning after the death of Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, the leader of the Anbar Awakening Council, who was killed shortly after meeting President Bush in Anbar in September. His brother, Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha, took over as leader of the group.

    Sheik Abu Risha responded Tuesday to an audiotape of the Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, that was broadcast on Al Jazeera on Monday. The tape admonished Sunni Muslims in Iraq for allowing divisions within their ranks in the struggle against the United States, according to SITE, a group that monitors extremist Islamic groups.

    "We invite bin Laden to tell us who his people are," Mr. Abu Risha said. "Let them come out, and we will fight them. Here I am. I am willing to lead the fight."

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    Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, Qais Mizher from Ramadi and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Salahuddin.

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    US Airstrike Kills at Least 11 in Iraq
    By Doug Smith
    The Los Angeles Times

    Wednesday 24 October 2007

The target was a bomb-planting cell, but villagers say farmers were hit. Toddlers and teenagers also died, they say.

    Baghdad - A U.S. airstrike left at least 11 dead in a village in northern Iraq on Tuesday, heightening an ongoing Iraqi backlash over the civilian toll of American military actions.

    The military said in a statement that a helicopter fired on a group of men believed to be a cell that places roadside bombs. The men then took refuge in a nearby house and continued to engage U.S. troops, the military said.

    The statement said 11 Iraqis were killed, including a militant known to be a member of a bomb cell.

    Residents in the village of Mukaisheefa, about 80 miles north of Baghdad, contested the military account, saying 15 people were killed and that the men were farmers irrigating their fields in the pre-daylight hours.

    Abdul Wahab Ahmed, a neighbor, said the dead included two toddlers and four teenagers. Five were women, he said.

    Ahmed said two of three farmers killed were in the field, and another, who was injured, went back to the village of several dozen houses. As neighbors gathered around the man's house, jets made two bombing runs, Ahmed said.

    A member of the Iraqi parliament who has previously criticized U.S. military tactics said Tuesday's attack was further evidence of the misuse of air power.

    "That has been repeated many times," said Mahmoud Othman, who had spoken out in parliament Monday for restrictions on the American forces. "They may kill some terrorists but they kill innocent people with them."

    Parliament is divided over what position to take on the annual United Nations Security Council reauthorization of the U.S. presence in Iraq. Some, particularly moderate Sunni Arab leaders, view the American forces as crucial to the country's future, but many Shiite Muslims resent American incursions in their neighborhoods.

    The debate Monday came a day after a U.S. raid on a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad in which Iraqi officials said 13 civilians were killed. The U.S. military said the strike in Sadr City killed 49 "criminals" and it was unaware of any civilian casualties.

    The statement released by the military after Tuesday's fighting dealt elliptically with the question of civilian casualties. While characterizing one of the dead as a militant, it described four others as "military-age males." It said the group included "suspected IED [roadside bomb] emplacers," but did not say how many.

    Ahmed, the local resident, said the helicopter opened fire on three men who were working on their farm about two miles from the highway that passes near the village between the cities of Samarra and Tikrit, too far to have been planting a bomb on the route.

    "I know all the men," Ahmed said. "They have nothing to do with these things. They were very good people."

    Army Maj. Margaret Kageleiry, a U.S. military spokeswoman for northern Iraq, declined to provide further detail. The military statement said the engagement was under review.

    The U.S. military and Iraqi witnesses frequently contradict each other when discussing clashes that involve Iraqi deaths, and it is difficult in many cases to independently confirm or debunk the accounts.

    Elsewhere on Tuesday, four people were killed in a battle with gunmen who attacked a patrol, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior said. Two of the dead were police officers.

    Four bodies, apparent victims of execution, were found in the capital.

    Police confirmed the kidnapping Monday of an Iraqi broadcast journalist in northeast Baghdad. The driver of longtime news reporter Jinan Ubaidi was found dead, but there was no further information on her fate.

    Police in the city of Fallouja, 35 miles west of Baghdad, found 16 men bound, blindfolded and shot to death in a deserted building Monday, police Lt. Col. Jubair Dulaimi said Tuesday. There was no apparent motive, he said.

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    doug.smith@latimes.com

    Times staff writers Wail Alhafith, Saif Hameed and Raheem Salman in Baghdad and special correspondents in Samarra and Baghdad contributed to this report.