BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP):
Radical Shi'ites reported yesterday that 18 people were killed by United States and Iraqi army forces at a mosque in eastern Baghdad. Police said 22 died in the clash after gunmen opened fire on U.S. troops in the area.
The U.S. military would neither confirm nor deny the incident.
Associated Press videotape from the scene showed a tangle of dead male bodies with gunshot wounds on the floor of what was said to be the mosque imam's living quarters, attached to the place of worship.
The tape showed 5.56 mm shell casings scattered about the floor. U.S. forces use that size ammunition. Grieving men in white Arab robes stepped among the dead bodies strewn across a bloody floor, crying in grief.
MILITARY MUM
An American military spokes-man said there would be no comment until an "operational report" was filed by soldiers in the field.
"We understand there are reports out there with some inaccuracies. We're trying to ensure we've got it right," said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, spokesman for the Baghdad command. The command will not make a statement "until we get an operational report and have it confirmed," he said.
Abdul-Zahra al-Suaidi, head of al-Sadr's office in Baghdad, said U.S. forces and Iraqi army soldiers opened fire at the al-Moustafa Shi'ite mosque in the Ur neighbourhood, killing 18 people in what he called an unprovoked attack.
HOSPITAL SURROUNDED
Salam Al-Maliki, an official of the Al-Sader political bloc said American forces had surrounded the hospital to which the wounded were taken.
"It is an escalating plan by the U.S to draw the Sader bloc to a crisis," he said. "What is going on is a big conspiracy plotted by America against Iraq to create sedition and sectarianism".
Separately, Iraqi police Lt. Hassan Hmoud 22 people were killed in the mosque after gunmen opened fire on a U.S. patrol. He said he had no other details.
The new violence, in an area dominated by al-Sadr's organisation, was reported just hours after he personally was the apparent target of a mortar attack at his home in the holy city of Najaf, 150 kilometres (90 miles) south of Baghdad.
Thirty bodies, most of them beheaded, were found on the main street of a village north of Baghdad on Sunday, stepping up pressure on divided Iraqi leaders to form a government they hope can avert sectarian civil war.
