AP: More Iraqi Civilians Dead After U.S. Action

By: A U.S. helicopter opened fire Tuesday on men seen planting roadside bombs in a Sunni stronghold north of Baghdad, then chased them into a nearby house and continued to shoot, killing 11 Iraqis, including five women and one child, the military said.

Neighbors and relatives of those killed said 14 civilians were killed. They prayed and wept over the bodies, which were wrapped in colorful blankets for burial in the desert north of Samarra.

The attack began after men were seen placing bombs near the volatile city 60 miles north of Baghdad, said Maj. Peggy Kageleiry, a U.S. military spokeswoman.

An Apache helicopter ''engaged these enemy forces, and the enemy forces ran into a house and took over the structure,'' she said, adding the attack aircraft continued to fire at the suspected militants as they tried to escape.

A known member of a roadside bomb-making network was among five military-age men who were killed, but the dead also included five women and one child, the military said in a statement that cited Iraqi sources. The statement said the circumstances surrounding the airstrikes were under review.

Kageleiry expressed regret for the deaths of the civilians but blamed the insurgents for putting lives in danger by running into the house to escape attack by the U.S. forces.

Dhurgham Hamid, a man from the area that was hit, said the dead included a man who was a supervisor at the provincial education directorate, his wife, and an accountant at the agency.

''They were peaceful people who had nothing to do with the resistance or gunmen,'' Hamid said.

It was the third claim of civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes in as many days, raids that have prompted complaints from both sides of the sectarian divide that too many Iraqis are losing their lives, particularly as the Americans increasingly rely on air power to attack militants.

The hard-line Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars said the raid struck families who were celebrating the release of one of their sons from U.S. custody.

The group ''condemned the brutal crime that shows the savageness and brutality of the occupation in targeting disarmed civilians'' and placed blame on the Shiite-led government and the U.S. military.

The other two raids targeted Shiite militia fighters in the sprawling Sadr City district in eastern Baghdad.

On Monday, relatives and police said a 42-year-old woman and her 4-year-old daughter were seriously wounded when attack helicopters opened fire on a duplex that housed a family in one half and a store selling motor oil in the other.

The U.S. military said attack helicopters killed one extremist and wounded five after they were seen trying to plant a roadside bomb.

Ground forces also called for air support after encountering fierce resistance in a raid targeting a suspected Iranian-linked leader of a kidnapping ring in Sadr City on Sunday, although casualty tolls conflicted. The Americans said 49 militants were killed, but Iraqi officials insisted the number of casualties was 15 -- all civilians.

The U.N. Assistance Mission to Iraq said in its most recent human rights report that it had recorded at least 88 Iraqi civilians killed in U.S. airstrikes from April 1 to June 30.