Child dies as US troops kill six in Iraq market

SIX US troops were wounded in attacks in Iraq while US soldiers shot dead five arms sellers and a child at an arms market in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit.

The latest rash of violence came one day after a deadly car bomb blast at the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad which cast renewed doubt on the US-led coalition’s ability to restore order in Iraq.

The assaults against US troops marked 100 days since US President George W Bush declared an end to official hostilities in Iraq.

Since then, 55 US soldiers have been killed in attacks, thought to be organised by local pockets of resistance owing allegiance to Saddam and other groups of Iraqis opposed to the US-led occupation.

In Tikrit, north of the capital, the head of the local hospital said five Iraqi men and a child were shot dead when a US military patrol sprayed bullets at arms sellers test-firing Kalashnikovs in a street market.

A woman was also wounded in the shooting at 8.30am in the marketplace of the town, 175km from Baghdad, Dr Salah al-Dulaimi said.

But US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Bill MacDonald disputed this account, saying just two men were killed and two wounded, and describing them as “suspected former regime loyalists trafficking illegal arms”.

The incident came barely a week after US troops oversaw the burial of Saddam’s slain sons Uday and Qusay in a neighbouring village, angering locals with their heavy-handed patrols of the cemetery.

Lieutenant Colonel MacDonald said the Fourth Infantry Division had arrested 12 Iraqis, including three wanted for attacks, during raids in the Tikrit area overnight and early yesterday.

He also said three US soldiers were wounded in separate attacks around Tikrit, where the Fourth Infantry Division is scouring the countryside in an attempt to disable the support network of Saddam and hopefully find the ousted president himself.

Two were hospitalised after roadside bomb attacks, and a third was wounded by a mortar round, but returned to duty.

Sixty kilometres to the west of Baghdad, at least three US soldiers were wounded on Friday when a roadside blast hit two US all-terrain Humvees near al-Amariya, witnesses said.

A powerful explosion shook the road at 10.00 am, flipping over one of the vehicles, said farmer Sami Abed al-Issawi.

US troops immediately arrived at the scene, while a helicopter evacuated three wounded soldiers, he said.

Al-Amariya is just south of Fallujah, considered a centre of festering anti-US sentiment among the area’s Sunni Muslim community, long favoured under Saddam.