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    US Says It Accidentally Killed Nine Iraqi Civilians
    By Solomon Moore and Qais Mizher
    The New York Times

    Monday 04 February 2008

    Baghdad - American forces said Sunday they had accidentally killed nine Iraqi civilians and wounded three in a strike aimed at militants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia south of Baghdad, acknowledging what appeared to be one of the deadliest cases of mistaken identity in recent weeks.

    A military statement released late in the day said the accidental killings happened Saturday in Iskandariyah, about 25 miles south of the capital, and that the wounded were taken to American military hospitals.

    The statement did not further identify the civilian victims, but the Iraqi police said American aircraft, responding to an attack on an American convoy, had erroneously bombed Iraqi civilian guardsmen who have contracted with the American military to fight Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

    Those guardsmen, predominantly Sunnis, are considered a major reason the American military has successfully reduced insurgent violence in Iraq. But in recent weeks scores of the Sunni guardsmen, known variously as Concerned Local Citizens, Awakening Councils and the Sons of Iraq, have been killed in clashes with Qaeda fighters and Shiite militia groups.

    Lt. Patrick Evans, of the Navy, an American military spokesman, said that after the deaths in Iskandariya, American military officials met with a sheik representing the citizens of the local area and that the mistake was under investigation.

    "We offer our condolences to the families of those who were killed in this incident, and we mourn the loss of innocent life," Lieutenant Evans said. He said he did not know whether the Iraqi victims were citizen guardsmen or precisely how they had been killed.

    News of the mistaken attack coincided with other scattered violence in Iraq and the final passage of a much debated law that will make it more difficult for former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to keep their government jobs.

    Lt. Col. Ahmad Ibrahim, a senior official in Iraq's police commando force, was killed by a bomb placed under his car in the Mansour area of west Baghdad, the police said, and two of Mr. Ibrahim's bodyguards were wounded in the blast.

    In Baquba, capital of Diyala Province, Hussein Zubaidi, chief of the provincial council security committee, was wounded by a bomb that had been secretly planted inside the Diyala provincial headquarters, the police said.

    Two other government employees outside of the room were also wounded by the blast, the police said. A military spokesman disputed a police account that two American soldiers had also been wounded.

    After the attack, American soldiers sealed off the building and imposed an indefinite curfew in Baquba.

    An Iraqi police official said that Iraqi intelligence officials warned Mr. Zubaidi, a Sunni politician, two weeks ago that he might be a target of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the largely home-grown Sunni insurgent group that the Americans say is foreign-led.

    Over the past three years, the provincial headquarters in Baquba has been a target of several attacks and assassination attempts. Diyala has been known as a haven for the Sunni Arab insurgency since Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the original leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, was killed in an American bombing attack in June 2006.

    In Baghdad, the anti-Baath legislation effectively became law when the 10-day constitutional deadline for President Jalal Talabani to formally object to it passed.

    The Justice and Accountability Law, as the anti-Baath legislation is known, is widely believed to be harsher than the old de-Baathification process, which barred high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's predominately Sunni Arab Baath Party from holding government jobs.

    The new law could prohibit even more former officials from government service and purge many suspected Baathists from the security ministries, which have struggled to integrate Iraq's armed forces.

    According to some Iraqi officials' estimates, as many as 38,000 government officials could be affected by the new law if it is strictly enforced.Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, Iraq's leading Sunni politician, did nothing to stop the proposal from becoming law, despite having publicly criticized it over the past several days.

    Dhafir al-Ani, a lawmaker who is a member of Mr. Hashimi's Sunni political party, said Sunni lawmakers had decided to let the measure become law to avoid a political crisis and because they hope to change the law later.

    Ahmad Chalabi, a Shiite official who strongly supported the American-led overthrow of Mr. Hussein's regime and is a strong proponent of de-Baathification, said that with the new law, reversals of earlier purges from government posts are unlikely.

    People close to Mr. Talabani said that the law, despite being distasteful to Sunnis, was probably the best legislation they could get. Mr. Talabani and Adil Abdul Mahdi, Iraq's Shiite vice president, were reluctant to offer Baathists any concessions at all, including hard-won pensions for most dismissed former government members.

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    Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting.