BAGHDAD, 10 January 2005 — US troops mistakenly killed two Iraqi policemen and two bystanders near a checkpoint just hours after an American warplane exacted a heavy civilian toll when it bombed the wrong house, Iraqi officials said yesterday. The back-to-back incidents on Saturday fuelled anti-American anger over the deaths of innocents during a raging insurgency just three weeks before Iraq’s first election since US-led forces toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.
Residents said 14 people, including children, were killed in a strike in the northern village of Aaytha, and showed 14 freshly dug graves. The military, making a rare admission of error in its fight against guerrillas, said five people died when a 500-pound bomb flattened the house.
Shortly afterward, a US military convoy was hit by a roadside bomb blast near a police checkpoint south of Baghdad in a lawless area known as the “Triangle of Death”. Troops escorting the vehicles struck back but at the wrong target, Interior Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul-Rahman said. Two police officers and two civilians were killed. He said a fifth Iraqi suffered a heart attack and died at the scene.
The US military launched an investigation into the bombing at Aaytha, near the restive city of Mosul, but said it had no immediate information on the convoy attack near Yusufiya. Many Iraqis voiced resentment at what they call heavy-handed military tactics and callousness toward mounting civilian deaths, sentiment that has dented US efforts to win hearts and minds and get the country behind the Jan. 30 ballot.
“Why did these poor people have to die?” lamented Baghdad taxi driver Doraid Abdul Khaliq, 28. “Bombing, shooting and running a tank over cars have all become something normal.” US officials insist American forces do their utmost to avoid civilian casualties but say Sunni-led insurgents trying to disrupt the election mount many attacks from populated areas.
Pressing on with a bloody assassination campaign, gunmen shot dead the acting police chief of the northern city Samarra. A suicide car bomb rammed into an Iraqi police and army checkpoint in the town of Yusufiya south of Baghdad, killing two policemen and two civilians, police said.
Adding to the chaos, seven Ukrainian troops and a Kazakh soldier were killed when a bomb they had seized and were transporting for destruction exploded. It was one of the deadliest blows to America’s allies operating in the country.
In Seoul, the Foreign Ministry said it was checking reports that one or two South Koreans may have been kidnapped in Iraq. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said a group presumed to be Iraqi militants claimed, in a Jan. 6 message on its website, to have seized the South Koreans and was demanding Seoul pull out its 3,600 troops in 72 hours or face “Allah’s judgment”.
France said it still had no firm information on the fate of a woman journalist missing and feared to have been kidnapped. Also yesterday, a US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol in Baghdad, the military said.
Many Sunni leaders plan to boycott the polls, saying the insurgents’ campaign of intimidation, marked by suicide bombings and shootings, will make fair elections impossible.
With tension rising, US officials promised a thorough investigation of Saturday’s deadly bombing. “The intended target was another location nearby,” the army said, explaining it had been hunting an insurgent leader. It expressed deep regret for the “loss of possibly innocent lives”.
President George W. Bush has pledged to do everything possible to safeguard Iraq’s election but has acknowledged four of 18 provinces are still not secure enough to vote.
In the past week alone, insurgents have killed nearly 100 people in attacks mostly targeting security forces they regard as collaborators with foreign occupiers.
Many leaders of Saddam’s once-privileged Sunni minority have called for a delay in the vote, saying persistent violence in Sunni areas would scare away many voters and skew the results in favor of the long-marginalized Shiite majority.
But interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, has rejected any postponement of the vote, which is expected to cement the Shiites’ newfound political dominance.
