Iraqis Accuse U.S. Troops in Deaths of Civilians

Three Iraqi civilians reportedly were killed by American gunfire in the turbulent city of Fallouja on Tuesday after an angry protest over the detention of a young Iraqi woman.

Two civilians also died in a Baghdad incident involving U.S. troops late Monday, although it was unclear whether they were killed by shrapnel from a roadside bomb aimed at a U.S. Humvee or by American soldiers who subsequently opened fire.

Also Tuesday, just outside Fallouja, a U.S. Army Apache helicopter was apparently shot down in what, if confirmed, would be the third such incident in two weeks. In this case, the crew members escaped without injuries.

In Fallouja, the civilians were shot after militants with rocket-propelled grenades fired at the city hall where some American troops have offices, according to Iraqi police Sgt. Nazar Yassin.

“The Americans responded by shooting indiscriminately,” said Yassin, who was on duty at the time and witnessed the incident.

Three people were killed and one injured, Yassin said. U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. William Darley said he had no information on the incident.

Fallouja, about 35 miles west of Baghdad, has been plagued by violence since shortly after U.S. troops arrived in April.

As has often been the case, the violence this week was sparked by a house search and detention by U.S. troops. In this instance, the situation was particularly sensitive because the detainee was a just-married 17-year-old woman.

In Fallouja, a staunchly conservative Sunni Muslim-dominated town, it is a deep affront for a stranger to touch a woman.

A measure of the sensitivity of the issue is that last spring, rumors abounded that U.S. troops were using night-vision goggles to watch Iraqi women and were compromising female modesty by appearing in public in jogging shorts.

One of the biggest complaints was over the way soldiers searched for weapons. Fallouja’s men were furious that their wives and daughters were searched and their homes entered without permission.

U.S. troops, meanwhile, viewed the area as a hotbed of anti-American activity, and surprise searches were one of the few ways to exert control. The military compromised by having female soldiers search women.

On Monday, according to the Associated Press, the young bride was detained when soldiers came looking for male relatives. Although she was searched exclusively by women and released within hours, according to a relative, the incident outraged the townsmen, who staged a demonstration Tuesday.

In another incident Tuesday, grenade rounds were fired at a compound near Fallouja where ABC journalist Ted Koppel was reporting. U.S. soldiers returned fire, and at least three Iraqis were wounded, said Darley, the military spokesman.

Koppel and his “Nightline” crew were traveling with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division for a story on the military unit’s work. One stop was at a “youth center they are working to refurbish,” said Leroy Sievers, executive producer of “Nightline,” who is traveling with Koppel.

The anchor had finished his interviews and the ABC team was waiting for the 82nd Airborne to finish up so they could leave when “two RPGs were fired. One went over the walled compound,” Sievers said by phone. The second landed short of the compound.

The security outside “immediately opened up and they believe they wounded” one of the attackers, Sievers said, but they all got away.

In Monday’s civilian deaths in Baghdad, a car carrying five people -- two women and two children as well as a driver -- was on the same street as a U.S. Humvee when the military vehicle hit a roadside bomb. The soldiers in the Humvee then opened fire.

Darley, the military spokesman, said a boy and the driver were killed by shrapnel from the bomb, not by American gunfire.

Jamal Ahmed, 35, a driver by trade, disagreed. Ahmed, who was passing by when the bomb went off, said: “It seems like it was a mine planted on the roadside which exploded on the Humvee and the soldiers shot the Opel [car] with the family.”

Violence continued early today as a bomb blast was reported outside a police station in Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad. Two people were killed and 14 others wounded, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, American forces continued searching for insurgents and early today raided two homes in the city of Samarra, arresting four relatives of Izzat Ibrahim, who is suspected of organizing attacks on coalition forces. The onetime right-hand man of Saddam Hussein has a $10-million bounty on his head.

Times staff writers Elizabeth Jensen in New York and Patrick J. McDonnell in Baghdad, and special correspondents Hamid Sulaibi in Fallouja and Adel Mizban in Baghdad, contributed to this report.