Errant U.S. airstrike kills Kurdish guards

A U.S. airstrike accidentally killed eight members of a Kurdish security force and injured six others who were manning an observation point near a political office in the northern city of Mosul, Iraqi officials said Friday.

The U.S. military said five Kurdish security force members had died in the attack, which it said had been aimed at bomb makers affiliated with Al Qaeda.

U.S. military officials also said that three American soldiers had been killed Thursday during combat in Al Anbar province west of the capital. Their deaths brought to 3,118 the number of U.S. troops killed since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to the icasualties.orgwebsite.

In the southern city of Basra, a British soldier died in a roadside bomb attack and three others were injured, the British Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

A statement from the U.S. military said that American troops had received intelligence that bomb makers connected to Al Qaeda were operating in the Karama neighborhood of Mosul. Seeing armed men near a targeted bunker, U.S. ground forces fired warning shots and made several calls in Arabic and Kurdish for the men to lay down their weapons, the statement said.

As the men began shooting at the U.S. forces, an American aircraft “observed hostile intention from the bunker and exercised proper self-defense measures in response to the assessed threat,” said the statement, which expressed “deepest sympathies to the families of those individuals killed.”

Kurdish officials reacted angrily, saying the airstrike on one of the main roads in Mosul was inexplicable.

“We don’t have any explanation for what the Americans did,” said Kabir Amir Koran, an official with a local Kurdish party.

Ali Sourchi, a 30-year-old grocer, said he had been watching a movie shortly before midnight when the power suddenly went out. He went outside to check his generator and saw the airstrike. He fled inside, fearing what might happen next, he said.

“Sounds of the bombings continued until 2 a.m.,” he said. “In the morning, we found stone and rubble where the guards’ position used to be.”

Abdullah Bardi, an official with the Kurdish security forces, described the area as an insurgent stronghold.

“We have placed checkpoints in the area to secure the office and those who come through this way,” he said, adding that Kurdish officials were investigating the strike. “We are not satisfied with an apology.”

The U.S. military increasingly has relied on air support during missions.

Another airstrike killed eight suspected insurgents Thursday night in Baghdad, a separate statement from the U.S. military said.

Also in Baghdad, authorities said Friday they had recovered the bodies of 32 people slain and dumped in various neighborhoods. Elsewhere, bombings and kidnappings continued to spread death and destruction.

A car bomb went off south of Mosul near a police patrol, injuring eight people. Also north of the capital, in the disputed city of Kirkuk, a car bomb injured a police official and seven others Friday afternoon. The previous night, another car bomb there had wounded a politician affiliated with the minority Turkmen party.

Authorities in Hillah, south of Baghdad, said Friday that armed men dressed as police commandos had kidnapped 13 men the previous night. Two were freed, but the bodies of the remaining 11 were found nearby.

In Haswa, also south of the capital, a roadside bomb killed one civilian and injured seven others.

roug@latimes.com

Times staff writer Saif Rasheed and a special correspondent in Mosul contributed to this report.