BAGHDAD — A U.S. helicopter opened fire Tuesday on men seen planting roadside bombs in a Sunni stronghold north of Baghdad, then chased them into a nearby house and continued to shoot, killing 11 Iraqis, including five women and one child, the military said.
Neighbors and relatives of those killed said 14 civilians were killed. They prayed and wept over the bodies.
The attack began after men were seen placing bombs near the volatile city 60 miles north of Baghdad, said Maj. Peggy Kageleiry, a U.S. military spokeswoman.
An Apache helicopter “engaged these enemy forces, and the enemy forces ran into a house and took over the structure,” she said, adding that the attack aircraft continued to fire at the suspected militants as they tried to escape.
A member of a roadside bomb-making network was among five men killed, but the dead also included the women and child, the military said in a statement citing Iraqi sources.
Kageleiry expressed regret for the deaths of the civilians but blamed the insurgents for putting lives in danger by running into the house to escape attack by the U.S. forces.
It was the third claim of civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes in as many days, raids that have prompted complaints from both sides of the sectarian divide that too many Iraqis are losing their lives, particularly as the Americans increasingly attack using air power.
U.S. and Iraqi forces, meanwhile, banned vehicles, motorcycles and bicycles in the streets of the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi as hundreds of Iraqi police, soldiers and politicians gathered to commemorate the death of Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, the founder of the first anti-al-Qaeda group of Sunni tribal leaders. He was assassinated by a bomb Sept. 13.
