US forces kill civilians and child

AMERICAN soldiers mistakenly fired on a civilian vehicle outside an American base in a city north of Baghdad yesterday, killing three people, including a child, the military said.

Meanwhile, Iraq's foreign minister was quoted as saying tests were underway to determine if the head of al-Qaida's wing in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a weekend raid in Mosul. The US ambassador, however, said it appeared al-Zarqawi was not among the dead.

Elsewhere, insurgents killed a Sunni cleric, Khalil Ibrahim, outside his home in the mostly Shi'ite city of Basra. He was a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a group of influential Sunni clerics that has been sharply critical of the Shiite-led government.