WORLD> Middle East
US helicopter strike kills 8 Iraqi civilians
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-05-23 00:13

The US military said the Baiji attack was under investigation.

"Coalition forces regret the loss of innocent civilian lives," said Navy Captain Gordon Delcambre in a press statement. "Terrorists continue to show their disregard for human life by endangering children with their illegal and violent activities."

The US military accuses insurgents of often deliberately hiding among civilians, and previous air strikes on suspected militant hideouts have resulted in civilian deaths.

Iraqi police have raised questions about another operation by US forces in Baghdad on Wednesday in which 11 people were killed. The US military has said its troops shot dead 11 militants, but police and several residents said at least some of the dead were civilians killed by US snipers.

A spokesman for the US military in Baghdad, Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Stover, denied any civilians were killed during the military operation near the Baghdad stronghold of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

CORPSES IN SHEETS

Reuters pictures showed relatives of the dead standing beside corpses covered by white sheets outside a mosque in Baiji, an oil refining town 180 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad.

"There were two boys, one was eight and the other was 11," said police Major Ahmed Hussein, giving the ages of two of the victims.

A doctor at Baiji hospital who asked not to be named said it had received eight bodies following the incident early on Wednesday evening. One body was that of a 60-year-old man.

In October 2007, the United Nations mission in Iraq urged US forces to pursue a "vigorous" probe into an airstrike that killed 15 women and children and said its findings must be made public so that lessons could be learned.