BAGHDAD, 22 July 2006 — US troops in Iraq killed two suspected insurgents, two women and a child when they called in air support during a raid on an alleged hideout north of Baghdad yesterday, a military statement said.

A further 23 people, including several more women and children, were wounded in the assault, which the US said targeted “terrorists associated with senior Al-Qaeda in Iraq network members.”

An Iraqi police officer had earlier said US troops killed six people in the raid northwest of Baquba, and an AFP photographer saw six bodies in the city’s hospital following the operation.

“As the troops began to secure the area, they received small arms fire from the rooftop of one of the initial target buildings,” the US statement said, adding that soldiers had shouted warnings before calling in air support.

“The troops secured the area using a combination of aerial and ground fire... We regret that civilians are hurt or killed while coalition forces search to rid Iraq of terrorism,” it added.

Mohammed Omar, a resident of the area, said that local guards had opened fire on the US soldiers thinking they were insurgents.

The US military has been repeatedly criticized for killing Iraqi civilians, the most notable case being November’s alleged rampage by Marines in Haditha in the western Al-Anbar province in which 24 civilians were killed.

Diyala province, especially the area around Baquba, has been riven by sectarian fighting, with gunmen from both the Sunni and Shiite communities carrying out massacres of civilians.

Curfew Extended as Violence Mounts

Bombs blasted worshippers at two mosques in Iraq during Friday prayers and the authorities extended a daytime curfew on Baghdad in an apparent effort to prevent violence after one of the bloodiest weeks this year.

Bombs outside minority Sunni mosques in Khalis, north of the capital, and in the mainly Shiite east of Baghdad, each killed one man and wounded two, police said.

There were also new clashes in Mahmudiya, a violent town just south of the city where nearly 60 people were killed in a mass assault by gunmen on Monday. Three police and three Iraqi soldiers were killed in yesterday’s fighting, police said.

State television announced a four-hour traffic ban in force every Friday of late would be extended until 7 p.m.

US commanders are speaking about a looming fight to the finish in Baghdad between Shiite Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s two-month-old unity government and Sunni Arab rebels with links to Al-Qaeda and ousted President Saddam Hussein.

The US ambassador has warned that a greater threat may be the mounting sectarian violence between minority Sunnis and the Shiites empowered by the US invasion which ousted Saddam.

That has brought a risk that millions of ordinary but almost universally armed Iraqis may be dragged into all-out civil war.

US, Iraqi and international leaders have sounded alarms this week as new data showed tens of thousands of people have fled their homes in fear of death squads since a government of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds was formed in May and that some 6,000 civilians may have been killed in violence in two months.

US data showed attacks on security forces in Baghdad has averaged 34 a day over several days, compared to 24 in recent months. Baghdad morgue has taken in 1,000 bodies this month.