Women and child killed in Iraq firefight
Iraqi forces backed by a US helicopter battled Sunni gunmen south of Baghdad yesterday, and at least 11 combatants died. US troops killed five Iraqis - including two women and a child – in a separate exchange of fire.
An extended ban on vehicles held down violence in Baghdad after one of the most violent weeks in the capital this year, but four people were wounded by a bomb outside a Sunni mosque, police said.
The deadly firefight occurred in two mostly Shiite neighbourhoods of Mahmoudiya, a town 30km south of Baghdad where 50 people were killed in a market this week in an attack by Sunni gunmen.
At about 1.30pm yesterday, gunmen opened fire in two neighbourhoods of Mahmoudiya and Iraqi security forces responded, Capt. Ibrahim Abdullah said.
A US military statement said 11 people were killed – five gunmen, three Iraqi soldiers and three policemen. An Iraqi statement put the death toll at 18 – 11 attackers, four soldiers and three policemen. The difference could not be reconciled.
A US attack helicopter was called in to provide air support and destroyed a truck used by the gunmen, US military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said.
“This effective suppression of an apparent death squad by the Iraqi security forces, assisted by the coalition, shows exactly how security forces are working together to stop the violence,” Johnson said.
The civilian deaths came in an early morning raid in Baqouba, 55km northeast of Baghdad, where American troops were looking for associates of al-Qaida in Iraq, the US military said.
The Americans took fire from a rooftop and “several men were seen moving around”, the military said in a statement. The troops ordered people to leave the building, but “these instructions were ignored”, it said.
The bodies of two men, two women and a young girl were found in the rubble, the US military said.
They included two of the girl’s aunts, an uncle and a grandfather, police said. They did not know about the child’s parents.
The acknowledgement of the civilian deaths follows a string of allegations that US soldiers in Iraq have killed unarmed civilians. Five soldiers and one former soldier face charges in the alleged March 12 rape-slaying of an Iraqi teenager and three members of her family in Mahmoudiya.
A US Marine was killed in action yesterday in western Iraq, the US military said. The Marine was assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. It was the 24th death this month among US forces in Iraq. At least 2,558 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
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