At least 10 dead as US troops open fire on protest

AT LEAST 10 people were killed and scores wounded in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul when US troops fired on a crowd angered

The charges were denied by a US military spokesman in the city yesterday, who said troops had first come under fire from at least two gunmen and fired back, without aiming at the crowd.

But the incident overshadowed the start of US-brokered talks aimed at sketching out the country’s future leadership in the southern city of Nasiriyah, a Shi’ite Muslim bastion where 20,000 people marched through the city chanting “No to America, No to Saddam”.

The firefight in Mosul broke out as the newly-appointed governor of the city was making a speech which listeners deemed too pro-US, witnesses said.

“There were protesters outside, 100 to 150, there was fire, we returned fire,” a US military spokesman said, adding the initial shots came from a roof opposite the building, about 75 metres away.

“We didn’t fire at the crowd, but at the top of the building,” the spokesman added. “There were at least two gunmen, I don’t know if they were killed.”

“The firing was not intensive but sporadic, and lasted up to two minutes,” the spokesman said.

But witnesses charged that US troops fired into the crowd after it became increasingly hostile towards the new governor, Mashaan al-Juburi.

“They (the soldiers) climbed on top of the building and first fired at a building near the crowd, with the glass falling on the civilians. People started to throw stones, then the Americans fired at them,” said Ayad Hassun, 37.

“Dozens of people fell,” he said, his own shirt stained with blood.

“The people moved toward the government building, the children threw stones, the Americans started firing,” another witness, Marwan Mohammed, 50, said.

According to a third witness, Abdulrahman Ali, 49, the US soldiers opened fire when they saw the crowd running at the government building.

An AFP journalist saw a wrecked car in the square and ambulances ferrying wounded people to hospital, while a US aircraft flew over the northern city at low altitude. A doctor at the city hospital, Ayad al-Ramadhani said: “There are perhaps 100 wounded and 10 to 12 dead.”