US insists it attacked fighters, not wedding party

The US military insisted today it targeted foreign fighters not an Iraqi wedding party in a helicopter attack that killed more than 40 people, including children.

The aerial attack was on a suspected foreign fighters safe house in the desert near the Syrian border, said the US military.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq, said today that the coalition had “specific intelligence that showed foreign fighters infiltrating into Iraq”.

“We believe that the target location was that of a foreign fighter sanctuary and we took the appropriate, our obligatory actions as the coalition and the Iraqi security forces to ensure that the people of Iraq stay safe,” he said in Baghdad.

Iraqis say the helicopter had attacked a wedding party.

Video footage showed a truck containing bloodied bodies, many wrapped in blankets, piled one on top of the other.

Several were children, one of whom was decapitated. The body of a girl who appeared to be less than five years of age lay in a white sheet, her legs riddled with wounds and her dress soaked in blood.

The attack happened at about 2:45am on Wednesday in a desert region near the border with Syria and Jordan, according to Lieutenant Colonel Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of Ramadi, the provincial capital.

He said 42 to 45 people died, including 15 children and 10 women.

The area, a desolate region populated only by shepherds, is popular with smugglers, including weapons smugglers, and the US military suspects militants use it as a route to slip in from Syria to fight the Americans. It is under constant surveillance by American forces.

Military officials in Washington refused to address the question of whether anyone from a wedding party was among the people killed.

In a statement, the US Central Command said coalition forces conducted a military operation at 3am against a ”suspected foreign fighter safe house” in the open desert, 15 miles from the Syrian border.

The coalition troops came under hostile fire and “close air support was provided,” the statement said. The troops recovered weapons, Iraqi and Syrian currency, some passports and some satellite communications gear, it said.

Two Iraqis said to have been killed in the attack were buried in Baghdad today. Mourners said one of them was the wedding singer.

“At about 3am, we were sleeping and the planes started firing,” said one of the mourners, who gave his name only as Bassem.

“They fired more than 40 missiles. As soon as they started attacking, firing the first missile, I went away. I was running…There are no fighters. These are lies. There’s no resistance. Even the bride and the groom died.”

Other video footage showed mourners with shovels digging graves over a wide dusty area in Ramadi, the provincial capital where other bodies were taken. A group of men crouched and wept around one coffin.

Iraqis interviewed on the videotape said revellers had fired volleys of gunfire into the air in a traditional wedding celebration before the attack took place. American troops have sometimes mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire.

Ramadi hospital doctor Salah al-Ani said American troops came to investigate the gunfire and left.

However, al-Ani said, helicopters later arrived and attacked the area. Two houses were destroyed, he said.

“This was a wedding and the planes came and attacked the people at a house. Is this the democracy and freedom that Bush has brought us?” said a man on the videotape, Dahham Harraj. “There was no reason.”

The strike, widely reported in Iraq and the Middle East as an attack on a wedding party, comes at a time when American prestige is under fire as the United States tries to stabilise the country before the June 30 transfer of sovereignty are foundering.