Helicopter attack kills 6 Iraqi insurgents, U.S. says

By Molly Hennessy-FiskeTimes Staff WriterJuly 21, 2007 12:12 PM
Baghdad -- A U.S. military missile attack on insurgents in a town north of the capital left six insurgents dead and five wounded early today, officials said.
But witnesses in Husseiniya, about 20 miles north of Baghdad, said U.S. helicopters attacked three houses during a four-hour period, killing at least 18 people, including women and children. They said about 21 people were wounded in the attacks, which leveled the buildings.
The incident took place after insurgents fired on combined U.S. and Iraqi forces from a house near Husseiniya shortly before midnight, the U.S. military said.
U.S. attack helicopters returned fire with missiles, chasing the insurgents to a second house and dropping a bomb that caused several secondary explosions, probably from explosives stored in the building, the military said.
Iraqi police searched the area and found six insurgents killed and five wounded, the statement said.
But witnesses in the town offered a conflicting account.
"It was a war and not a response to an attack targeting them. It was a war against civilians inside their houses," said Hazim Hussein, 30, a wholesale merchant whose house is about 160 yards from the bomb site.
At 5:30 a.m., Hussein said, he emerged from his house to inspect the damage. He said he sifted through the remains of the three houses, where he found body parts of women and children. Neighbors as far as 55 yards away had been injured by flying glass and shrapnel, he said. U.S. soldiers sealed roads near the site for hours, he said.
Another witness, Trade Ministry official Ali Abid Fartusi, 36, said he saw seven or eight charred bodies, including those of children. He said residents in the mostly Shiite Muslim area have been attacked by Sunni insurgents in the east and U.S. forces in the west.
"We are between the hammer of the Sunni areas and the anvil of the American troops," Fartusi said. "We are living under miserable circumstances."
An official with the political organization of anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr said 17 people were killed in the attack, including three children.
Sheik Waleed Kraimawi said U.S. forces are attacking civilians to force them to expel Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.
"They're besieging the area," Kraimawi said, adding that Husseiniya residents are planning to march and demonstrate against the U.S. forces today.
A U.S. military spokesman said no civilian casualties were reported after the attack.
Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, a spokesman for the U.S. military's northern command in Iraq, said U.S. troops "take every precaution to prevent casualties among civilians." "Ultimately, the security and safeguarding of the Iraqi citizens is our mission, and the enemy disrupts this by shielding himself with the lives of those who want only to do good," Donnelly said.
The U.S. military reported today that an American soldier died after he was injured by an explosion next to his vehicle in Diyala province Friday, raising the total U.S. military deaths in Iraq since the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq to 3,632, according to icasualties.org, a website that tracks deaths in Iraq.
Scattered violence was reported across Iraq this afternoon. In the capital, a bomb inside a bus killed five passengers and injured 11. Two mortar rounds struck east Baghdad, killing two people and injuring four.
A car bomb exploded near an ice factory in Mahmoudiya, south of the capital, killing one and injuring five. The body of a policeman kidnapped Friday was recovered in the southern city of Diwaniya.
A bomb planted inside a body dumped on a road outside the northern city of Kirkuk exploded, killing a police officer and his brother. In the nearby town of Hawija, gunmen killed a police officer in a drive-by shooting at the marketplace.
molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com
Times staff writers Raheem Salman, Wail Alhafith and Said Rifai and correspondents in Baghdad and Kirkuk contributed to this report.