IRAQ: US troops fired at civilians yesterday as an angry crowd protested at the killing of 14 people in the bloodiest incident since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Doctors at the hospital in Falluja, a town 40 miles west of Baghdad, reported two people dead and 14 wounded in the latest protest.
It began after US commanders tried to reduce tension by pulling soldiers out of the school in a residential street where Monday's shooting occurred. The building stood locked and empty yesterday after 100 men of the 82nd Airborne division left under cover of darkness on Tuesday.
"I am very happy they've gone," Muhammad Jasem, a teacher, said. The front of his house opposite the school is full of holes from bullets fired by the troops when about 200 people marched to the school, calling on them to leave. The Americans claimed they were returning fire from gunmen in the crowd, but none was injured and the school shows no bullet marks.
Yesterday's incident took place in broad daylight when a crowd gathered outside a US post in a former Baath headquarters on the main street. Apache helicopters swooped over the town.
Capt Mike Riedmuller of the 3rd Armoured Cavalry said protesters threw stones which landed in the compound. A US convoy was passing through the town. "Someone fired a round and hit a vehicle. The convoy returned fire. One of my soldiers then positively identified a man with an AK-47 Kalashnikov rifle. He was not sure he could engage him without injuring a civilian, so, as part of our graduated response, he fired two warning shots," he said.
The mayor, Taha Dewi Hamid, appointed by local leaders after the former mayor fled when the regime fell, said he had met community leaders and local imams shortly before the shooting. "The unanimous view was that the Americans should pull out of the town. Not out of Iraq, but out of the town," he said.
He was not convinced that the Americans in the compound were to blame for yesterday, although he did not know what happened with the passing convoy. Former Baathists were paying a few people to provoke a crisis, he said. "The Americans fired into the air after people threw stones. Someone fired at the crowd. I don't believe it was the Americans who killed the people, but I'm not sure."
In the hospital, Kazal Abdul Hamid had two bones in his left calf broken by bullets while on yesterday's protest. He had no doubts what happened. "We weren't carrying any weapons. Before we set off we were told not to take any guns," he said. "Four or five armoured personnel carriers came by. A soldier in one wanted to provoke something, and fired. After that the troops in the compound started shooting." The two men who died both had bullets in the head.
Shamil Khalif, a hospital doctor, said the bullets were not from Kalashnikovs. "It was a high-calibre American weapon," he said.