U.S. airstrike kills at least 11 in Iraq

A U.S. airstrike left at least 11 dead in a village in northern Iraq on Tuesday, heightening an ongoing Iraqi backlash over the civilian toll of American military actions.

The military said in a statement that a helicopter fired on a group of men believed to be a cell that places roadside bombs. The men then took refuge in a nearby house and continued to engage U.S. troops, the military said.

The statement said 11 Iraqis were killed, including a militant known to be a member of a bomb cell.

Residents in the village of Mukaisheefa, about 80 miles north of Baghdad, contested the military account, saying 15 people were killed and that the men were farmers irrigating their fields in the pre-daylight hours.

Abdul Wahab Ahmed, a neighbor, said the dead included two toddlers and four teenagers. Five were women, he said.

Ahmed said two of three farmers killed were in the field, and another, who was injured, went back to the village of several dozen houses. As neighbors gathered around the man’s house, jets made two bombing runs, Ahmed said.

A member of the Iraqi parliament who has previously criticized U.S. military tactics said Tuesday’s attack was further evidence of the misuse of air power.

“That has been repeated many times,” said Mahmoud Othman, who had spoken out in parliament Monday for restrictions on the American forces. “They may kill some terrorists but they kill innocent people with them.”

Parliament is divided over what position to take on the annual United Nations Security Council reauthorization of the U.S. presence in Iraq. Some, particularly moderate Sunni Arab leaders, view the American forces as crucial to the country’s future, but many Shiite Muslims resent American incursions in their neighborhoods.

The debate Monday came a day after a U.S. raid on a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad in which Iraqi officials said 13 civilians were killed. The U.S. military said the strike in Sadr City killed 49 “criminals” and it was unaware of any civilian casualties.

The statement released by the military after Tuesday’s fighting dealt elliptically with the question of civilian casualties. While characterizing one of the dead as a militant, it described four others as “military-age males.” It said the group included “suspected IED [roadside bomb] emplacers,” but did not say how many.

Ahmed, the local resident, said the helicopter opened fire on three men who were working on their farm about two miles from the highway that passes near the village between the cities of Samarra and Tikrit, too far to have been planting a bomb on the route.

“I know all the men,” Ahmed said. “They have nothing to do with these things. They were very good people.”

Army Maj. Margaret Kageleiry, a U.S. military spokeswoman for northern Iraq, declined to provide further detail. The military statement said the engagement was under review.

The U.S. military and Iraqi witnesses frequently contradict each other when discussing clashes that involve Iraqi deaths, and it is difficult in many cases to independently confirm or debunk the accounts.

Elsewhere on Tuesday, four people were killed in a battle with gunmen who attacked a patrol, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior said. Two of the dead were police officers.

Four bodies, apparent victims of execution, were found in the capital.

Police confirmed the kidnapping Monday of an Iraqi broadcast journalist in northeast Baghdad. The driver of longtime news reporter Jinan Ubaidi was found dead, but there was no further information on her fate.

Police in the city of Fallouja, 35 miles west of Baghdad, found 16 men bound, blindfolded and shot to death in a deserted building Monday, police Lt. Col. Jubair Dulaimi said Tuesday. There was no apparent motive, he said.

doug.smith@latimes.com

Times staff writers Wail Alhafith, Saif Hameed and Raheem Salman in Baghdad and special correspondents in Samarra and Baghdad contributed to this report.