Accounts Differ Sharply on U.S. Attack in Iraq

Source: AP

BAGHDAD, Oct. 5 — American troops backed by aircraft attacked a Shiite town north of Baghdad at dawn on Friday, killing at least 25 Iraqis the military described as criminals who were involved in the transport of weapons. But Iraqis at the scene said the dead were civilians, though some were armed.

. . .

Iraqis at the scene gave an account that diverged sharply from that of the military.

They said that the Iraqis who were killed were trying to defend their town from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni militant group that American intelligence believes has foreign leadership. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has been active in Diyala Province, where the town is located, but so have militias associated with the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

“The residents were defending themselves and the town,” said Uday al-Khadran, the mayor of Khalis, the district in which the fighting occurred. “They were not militias for killing people and they were recognized by the security forces in the district, and this issue is familiar in all the towns of Khalis because of Al Qaeda threats, especially to the Shiite,” he said.

An official in the provincial office in Baquba, the provincial capital, said that the city’s hospital had received eight children, four of whom died.


Read more: http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20071006/ZNYT03/710060356/1001/TL23

of one dead child at a time

That's the 'Merican f-ing way isn't it?

:sarcasm: