NYT : U.S. Investigating Strike That Killed 15 Civilians

U.S. Investigating Strike That Killed 15 Civilians

By PAUL von ZIELBAUER | October 13, 2007

BAGHDAD, Oct. 12 — The American military said today it was vigorously investigating a Thursday evening airstrike on a stronghold of senior insurgent leaders northwest of Baghdad that also killed nine children and six women, one of the highest tolls to result from a single American military action since the beginning of the Iraq war.

Rear Adm. Greg Smith, an American military spokesman here, said the killings were “absolutely regrettable” but blamed the enemy fighters for engaging American forces while using civilians as a shield.

“We do not target civilians,” the admiral said in an interview today. “But when our forces are fired upon, as they are routinely, then they have no option but to return fire.”

The airstrike, near Lake Tharthar, a Sunni Arab region about 75 northwest of Baghdad, killed 19 senior-level insurgents with ties to al Qaeda in Mesopotamia after insurgents first fired on a unit of American soldiers approaching a residential structure, the United States military said.

“A ground element came under fire from that building that we had to neutralize,” Admiral Smith said. Nineteen insurgents were reported killed. It was not clear on Friday whether American commanders knew so many civilians were in or near the structure when they authorized the airstrike.

“The enemy has a vote here,” Admiral Smith said, “and when he chooses to surround himself with civilians and then fire upon U.S. forces, our forces have no choice but to return a commensurate amount of fire. Which is what they did last evening.” The civilian deaths, on the eve of the Id al-Fitr holiday to celebrate the end of Ramadan, came at a time of extreme sensitivity among Iraqi and American officials here regarding the mistaken or inadvertent killing of noncombatants by American military and private security forces.

Also on Friday, a suicide bomber pushing a candy cart into a playground in the northern town of Tuz Khormato killed one 8-year-old boy and wounded 23 others, a senior police official said. A security guard, whose child was playing in the park, was also killed after he tried to subdue the bomber as he entered the playground, said Lt. Col. Abbas Muhammad, the city’s police chief.

Colonel Muhammad identified the guard as Abbas Sameen, 35, the father of three children. He said the boy killed was Qasem Hasan Ismael.

Friday was a national holiday, when Sunni Arab Muslims broke fast to celebrate the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. As is custom, the children in Tuz Khormato, a religiously mixed city of Sunnis, Shiite, Turkmen and Kurdish residents, were playing in a temporary playground — in a lot usually reserved for truck parking — filled with temporary carnival rides and confection booths.

Also Friday, the American military gave further details about its search for two soldiers kidnapped during an ambush in May.

The military said that an American patrol found a weapons cache on Tuesday that contained two American M-4 service rifles and an American M-249 belt-fed machine gun, which belonged to one of the kidnapped soldiers, Spc. Alex Jimenez.

Specialist Jimenez and Private Byron Fouty were abducted on May 12 along with a third soldier, Pfc. Joseph Anzack Jr., whose body has since been found, after an attack on their patrol in an area south of Baghdad.

A manhunt has been under way since the May abductions for the two soldiers, who were assigned to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, Fourth Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment. The missing soldiers’ identification cards and wallets were discovered during a raid on a house in Samarra, north of Baghdad, in June.

Mudhafer al-Husaini contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Kirkuk.