US air strike hits wrong house in Iraq: 5 killed

The man who owned the house said the bomb killed 14 people, and an Associated Press photographer said seven of them were children.

The strike in the town of Aitha, 30 miles south of Mosul, came hours before a senior US Embassy official in Iraq met with leaders of the Sunni Arab community to apply political pressure against their threat to boycott Jan. 30 elections. The Arab satellite broadcaster al-Jazeera said the Sunnis asked the Americans to announce a timetable for a US troop withdrawal.

Violence also continued, with at least eight Iraqis killed.

A US soldier was killed in a bomb explosion while he was on patrol in Baghdad yesterday, the military said.

"A Task Force Baghdad soldier was killed at about 9 am (0600 GMT) on January 9 after a patrol was struck by an improvised explosive device," it said in a statement.

US troops opened fire after their convoy was struck by a roadside bomb at a checkpoint south of Baghdad, killing at least five Iraqis, including two policemen and three civilians, police said yesterday.

The firing occurred late Saturday near the police checkpoint in Yussifiyah, 15km south of Baghdad, Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said. The US military said it was investigating the report.

American officials repeatedly have insisted the vote go ahead, but it is an extremely delicate time, with Iraq's government perceived by many as closely tied to the US-led coalition.

Late Saturday, a US military statement said an F-16 jet dropped a 500-pound GPS-guided bomb on a house that was meant to be searched during an operation to capture "an anti-Iraqi force cell leader."

"The house was not the intended target for the airstrike. The intended target was another location nearby," the military said in a statement.

The homeowner, Ali Yousef, told Associated Press Television News that the airstrike happened at about 2:30 a.m., and American troops immediately surrounded the area, blocking access for four hours. The brick house was reduced to a pile of rubble, according to an Associated Press photographer at the scene.

An Associated Press photographer said from the scene that 14 members of the same family seven children, four women and three men were killed, and six people were wounded, including another child in the house and five people from neighboring houses. By evening, all 14 victims had been buried in a nearby cemetery, Yousef said.

The US military statement said coalition forces went to the area to provide assistance and said five people were killed. It said there was no other damage.