All 25 people killed in a US air attack on an Iraqi village were members of an extremist group, the US military said on Saturday, amid claims that women and children were among the dead, AFP reported. “In this instance, we have confirmed that the 25 criminals who were killed were responsible for the attack on our forces and in fact were members of an extremist group operating in the Baqubah region,” a statement said.On Friday, the US military said it had launched two air raids on Jayzani Al-Imam village, 30 miles (50 kilometres) north of Baghdad after a ground operation to capture an insurgent commander believed to be smuggling weapons from Iran ran into trouble against insurgents firing rocket-propelled grenades. Villager Ahmed Abu Noor, who accompanied 15 of the 66 or so people wounded in the airstrikes to a Baghdad hospital, told AFP that civilian guards armed by the Iraqi police had during the night mistaken US troops for Al Qaeda fighters, who had previously targetted the village. “Guards around the village engaged in a firefight with the troops,” said Noor. Soon afterwards the village was bombed by US aircraft. “The air strike hit the guard points around the village as well as the village itself, destroying houses. Twenty-six people were killed, including two women, three students and six guards,” he said.
Abu Ahmed al-Khalisi, a villager who was in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Saturday to bury the 26 killed, corroborated Noor’s version of events. “The villagers were at their homes on a calm Ramazan night,” Khalisi said. “They were taken by surprise to see armed men besieging their village. The village in the past has been targetted by Saddamist and Takfiri (Sunni insurgent) groups. The village youth had formed an ‘Awakening’ group to defend their village. They were not aware that it was the Americans who were besieging the village so they started shooting,” he added.
A police officer in Baquba, under whose jurisdiction Jayzani Al-Imam village falls, confirmed the versions of the two villagers. “We don’t have any reports from the forces on the ground regarding Iraqi volunteers. Coalition forces engaged a hostile threat in self-defence,” US military spokesman Major Winfield Danielson said. “There were two airstrikes, one helicopter, one fixed-wing. There was continued fighting between the two airstrikes. It would be readily apparent to any friendly forces in the area that the ground force was coalition once the first aircraft showed up in support. “I can say that we had personnel on the ground who engaged a hostile force, and they didn’t assess that there were any women or children present in the area,” he added.