BAGHDAD, 28 July 2003 — US troops opened fire in Karbala yesterday as stone-throwing Iraqis protested over Marines killing a man the day before. A US Marine officer said his men returned fire in self-defense yesterday but did not know if anyone was hit. He said the man they shot dead on Saturday was carrying a weapon.
Doctors showed the body of a second man they said was shot dead yesterday. In confused and angry scenes, journalists saw troops fire in the air to disperse the crowd.
Elsewhere, Iraqi guerrillas killed a US soldier in an overnight grenade attack south of Baghdad as the deaths of Saddam Hussein’s sons showed no sign of staunching bloodshed.
In a reminder that tensions are not restricted to Saddam’s Sunni Muslim heartlands north and west of the capital, the Karbala protesters said they were incensed by Saturday’s killing because they believed those involved had been trying to keep the Americans out of the Imam Hussein Mosque.
“America is the enemy of God!” chanted dozens of mourners as they carried the coffin of Haider Al-Shihlawi, in his 20s, who doctors said was shot by troops in Karbala yesterday. Any spread of conflict would be unwelcome to the Americans.
Five dead soldiers in 24 hours — 10 since US troops killed Saddam’s sons Uday and Qusay on Tuesday — brought the number killed by a largely unseen enemy to 49 since May 1, when President George W. Bush told them major combat was over.
Saddam himself remains on the run with a $25 million price on his head. US commanders say the net is closing on him as the payment of a $30 million bounty to the informant who betrayed his sons brings in more tip-offs. Troops have been searching across Iraq, notably around his hometown of Tikrit.
“We’re still on the offensive here. There’s still war going on in Iraq,” a US military spokesman, Maj. William Thurmond, said in Baghdad. Troops were suffering 10 to 13 attacks a day, with no obvious increase in incidents lately, he said.
That said, a third of all the combat deaths of the past three months have been sustained in the past nine days alone.
On Saturday, three soldiers were killed when a grenade was thrown at them as they guarded a children’s hospital in Baqubah, north of Baghdad, and one soldier was killed in an attack on a convoy in Abu Ghraib, on the capital’s outskirts.
“Unfortunately attacks do occur and casualties do occur and people should expect that,” Thurmond said.
