Iraqis say U.S. mistakenly fired on them again

Baghdad – Three neighborhood security guards were killed and two others were injured when an American helicopter fired at their checkpoint south of Baghdad early today, police said.

It was the latest in a string of complaints about errant strikes that are stoking tensions between the mostly Sunni Arab fighters and their U.S. backers.

Sheik Mohammed Ghuriari, who heads the so-called Awakening Councils that supply fighters to protect neighborhoods in north Babil province, said it was the third U.S.-led strike on one of their checkpoints in less than two months.

“The U.S. forces should learn from their mistakes,” Ghuriari said in a telephone interview. “Such repeated attacks will make the Awakening Councils review their stance in the agreements they signed with the U.S. forces.”

A U.S. military spokeswoman had no immediate information on the incident but said she would look into it.

U.S. forces credit the neighborhood groups, which they have dubbed Concerned Local Citizens or Sons of Iraq, with helping reduce violence 60% nationwide since the military completed the deployment of 28,500 additional troops last summer. They pay many of the fighters about $10 a day to guard roads, bridges and other key infrastructure.

U.S. commanders have asked the groups, which have spread rapidly across central and northern Iraq, to wear special T-shirts and reflective belts to help distinguish them from the insurgents they fight. But their members, who now number more than 80,000, complain there are not enough of these to go around.

U.S. commanders also suspect that insurgents have infiltrated some of the groups, which include many men who used to fight against the Americans.

The recent drop in violence has been most significant in Baghdad and Anbar province in the west, which were the focus of the U.S. troop buildup. But security remains a problem in regions to the east and north of the capital, where insurgents have sought sanctuary since the so-called troop surge began a year ago.

In Tall Afar, about 360 miles northwest of Baghdad, two suicide bombers blew themselves up today among worshipers outside a Shiite Muslim mosque, killing at least three people and injuring 16, officials said. The attackers struck during the midday Friday prayers, the most important of the Muslim week.

One of the bombers tried to enter Sheik Jawad Mosque but was stopped by policemen, who pushed the man aside and shot him, said Maj. Gen. Najim Abdullah Jubouri, the city’s mayor.

The explosives strapped to the man’s waist detonated outside the gate. As a crowd gathered, another bomber rushed toward them and was also shot by police, triggering a second blast, Jubouri said.

“It was good that our security forces were able to prevent them from going inside the mosque, otherwise we would have a disaster,” he said by telephone from Tall Afar, where he had just visited the wounded in the hospital.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

Times staff writer Raheem Salman in Baghdad and special correspondents in Hilla and Mosul contributed to this report.