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US checks claims kids used as decoy and killed in Iraq

Insurgents detonated a car bomb with two children in it after using the children as decoys to get through a military checkpoint in Baghdad, a US general said on Tuesday.

Speaking at a news briefing at the Pentagon, Major General Michael Barbaro, deputy director for regional operations at the Pentagon's Joint Staff, said US soldiers had stopped the car at the checkpoint but had allowed it to pass after seeing the two children in the back seat.

"Children in the back seat lower suspicion," he said, according to a transcript. "We let it move through. They parked the vehicle. The adults run out and detonate it with the children in back."

He offered no further details.

A top US military spokesman in Baghdad, said late on Tuesday that his office had no record of the bombing but was researching it.

"I don't know what event he's talking about," Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver said.

Agence France-Presse, quoting an unnamed US military official, said the incident occurred on Sunday. The bombers parked the vehicle across the street from a school, then ran away, leaving the children inside, the official told the news agency. The blast killed the two children and three other civilians and wounded seven, the official said.

The US command on Tuesday gave its account of a disputed raid on a Shiite mosque in Baghdad late on Monday that infuriated many in the Shiite community and led some to question their cooperation with the latest US-led security plan.

According to a US military statement, Iraqi soldiers stormed the mosque, in the mostly Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya in search of suspected militants, and about 50 people were temporarily detained during the raid.

Contrary to claims made by neighbors and Shiite community leaders, the US command said its soldiers had remained outside the building during the entire operation.

After the raid, US-Iraqi forces came under attack by about 20 gunmen firing rocket-propelled grenades and small arms, the statement said, adding that US troops returned fire, killing three people it described as insurgents.

Shiite community leaders and residents in the neighborhood of the raid gave a significantly different account. They said US forces had stormed not one but two mosques. As the soldiers entered one of the mosques they opened fire on worshippers who tried to flee, said Salah Abdul Qadir, spokesman for the Shiite Endowment, a government organization that supervises all Shiite mosques in Iraq.

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