U.S. Rejects Claim That Allied Strike Killed 23 in Iraq

Iraqi television reported Wednesday that a U.S.-British airstrike killed 23 people during a soccer game, but U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that if there were deaths, they were probably caused by Iraq’s own “misdirected groundfire.”

The state-run Iraqi News Agency said allied planes attacked Tall Afar, about 230 miles northwest of Baghdad, the capital. It did not say when, but it said the victims were buried Wednesday. Eleven other people were reportedly injured.

At the Pentagon, officials said Iraqi forces fired several surface-to-air missiles at allied planes Tuesday and that part of at least one of the Iraqi missiles apparently malfunctioned and landed at the soccer field.

Rumsfeld said the planes saw fire from anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles that did not come “anywhere near our airplanes.”

The allied planes did not fire in response, he said.

“In the event anyone was killed, it undoubtedly was the result of misdirected groundfire that ended up in a location that was not intended,” Rumsfeld said in a brief encounter with reporters. He did not elaborate.

State-run Iraqi television showed children being treated at a hospital after reportedly being injured at the field. It also quoted an unidentified doctor who treated some of the injured as saying the attack occurred Tuesday.

Allied aircraft patrol the skies over southern and northern Iraq, zones established after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Shiite Muslim rebels in the south and Kurds in the north from Saddam Hussein’s forces. Iraq does not recognize the “no-fly” zones.