Iraq's ruling parties demanded US forces cede control of security on Monday as the government launched an inquiry into a raid on a Shiite mosque complex that ministers said saw "cold-blooded" killings by US-led troops.
US commanders rejected the charges and said their accusers faked evidence by moving bodies of gunmen killed fighting Iraqi troops in an office compound. It was not a mosque, they said.
After 24 hours of limited communication, US commanders mounted a media offensive to deny Shiite accounts of a mosque massacre and portray instead a bold and disciplined operation by US-trained Iraqi special forces that killed 16 fighters and freed a hapless Iraqi hostage being held to ransom for US$20,000.
Three gunmen were wounded and 18 people detained, he added.
"After the fact, someone went in and made the scene look different from what it was," Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli said of footage aired extensively on state television showing the bodies of apparently unarmed civilians in a mosque.
"There's been huge misinformation," he said. He insisted he did not know the religious affiliation of the group targeted, although the raid was the fruit of lengthy intelligence work.
He did not spell out his criticism of the Shiite political groups who made the massacre accusations. Confrontation between the Iranian-linked Shiite leaders and US forces comes at a sensitive time when Washington is pressing them to forge a unity government with minority Sunnis to avert civil war.
Iraq's security minister accused US and Iraqi forces of killing 37 unarmed civilians in the mosque after tying them up.
Residents and police, who put the death toll among the troops' opponents at around 20, spoke of a fierce battle between the soldiers and gunmen from the Mehdi Army militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose followers ran the mosque.
Though Chiarelli stressed his forces did not view the site targeted as a mosque, neighbours and clerics insisted it was. It was not, however, a typical religious building but a compound of former Baath party offices converted by Sadr followers.
Despite confusions, one thing was certain: Shiite leaders are up in arms against the US forces who brought them to power by ousting former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated Baathist regime.
"The Alliance calls for a rapid restoration of [control of] security matters to the Iraqi government," Jawad al-Maliki, a senior spokesman of the Shiite Islamist Alliance and ally of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, told a news conference.
Meanwhile, policemen thwarted a suicide car bomb attack on their station south of Baghdad yesterday morning, killing two insurgents, security sources said.
A minibus filled with explosives sped towards the police station in Haswa, south of Baghdad, with one passenger spraying gunfire, police said.
Police shot back and the bus exploded, killing the two insurgents and wounding 11 policemen and a female bystander. Five of the wounded were in critical condition, police said.
Subsequent examination of the bus revealed that the driver's hands had been chained to the wheel.
Shortly after the blast, three mortar rounds fell on the station, but no one was hurt, police added.
In the southern city of Nasiriya, a bomb placed in front of the house of Mohammed Nur, the local correspondent for US-funded Radio Sawa, exploded, killing three pedestrians, the local hospital said.
Nur escaped unscathed.
In a bizarre daylight abduction, five employees of a foreign exchange company and a customer were kidnapped by gunmen who arrived in several cars, police said.
The gunmen also made off with US$60,000 worth of cash from the company, Musa Exchange, located in the mixed Harthiya neighbhourhood.
In another kidnapping, Auf Abdel Rahman al-Duri, a high school teacher in the Al-Qahira neighborhood of the capital was seized by gunmen.
His fate is unknown.
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