BAGHDAD — A child was among at least seven Iraqis killed when U.S. soldiers opened fire in two incidents in central Iraq during a span of 24 hours, while police said a suicide bomber posing as a shepherd killed as many as 13 people Tuesday outside a police station in eastern Diyala province.
The shootings involved vehicles that the soldiers reportedly perceived as threatening. Three women and a man were killed while riding a minibus to work in the northeastern Baghdad neighborhood of Shaab, according to the Interior Ministry.
A U.S. military spokesman said soldiers opened fire when the vehicle turned onto a road that had been closed to all traffic but family cars. The soldiers opened fire when “the driver failed to heed a warning shot.”
Separately, U.S. soldiers shot at a car speeding through a roadblock north of Baghdad on Monday during an offensive against al-Qaeda in Iraq. One child and two men were killed in the incident near Baiji, north of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.
“The ground force fired warning shots, but the driver attempted to speed through the roadblock. Perceiving hostile intent, the ground force engaged, killing both men,” the statement read.
The child was found wounded in the back seat and rushed to a military medical station, where he died, according to the statement.
In a separate incident, Iraq’s Interior Ministry reported that U.S. soldiers opened fire Tuesday evening near the Ibin Hayan bridge in Tobji in northwestern Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding six others. However, the U.S. military gave no immediate confirmation of the incident.
The spate of shootings came after the U.S. and Iraqi governments signed a declaration of principles Monday committing them to reaching an agreement by the end of next year on America’s long-term security role in Iraq, including the status of U.S. forces. Iraqis regularly complain of cases in which U.S. troops accidentally have killed civilians during their operations. However, the U.S. military says it has cut the number of incidents in recent months as violence has dropped in Baghdad.
In Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad, a suicide bomber dressed as a shepherd was herding sheep past the main police headquarters’ back entrance when he detonated his explosives. Local police said the blast killed 13 people and wounded another 13. The Interior Ministry in Baghdad later lowered the death toll to seven, including four policemen, but it was unclear which toll was correct.
Elsewhere, two U.S. soldiers were killed and two others wounded when an explosion ripped through a vehicle, the military said in a statement.
Near Baqubah, a Shiite tribal sheik was killed when Sunni militants, suspected of belonging to al-Qaeda in Iraq, attacked the village of Albu Aziz, police said.
