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US says civilians killed in raid

Iraqi women and children bore the brunt yesterday of a bloody start to Eid al-Fitr as the US military admitted to killing 15 in an air raid and a sinister suicide attack on kids shocked a northern town.

"Nineteen suspected insurgents and 15 women and children were killed in an operation Thursday in the Lake Tharthar region," northwest of Baghdad, a US military spokesman told Agence-France Presse in a rare admission of civilian deaths.

Further north in Tuz, a suicide bomber exploded a cart of sweets on a crowded playground yesterday, killing a child, a father and wounding 20 children, officials said.

Police captain Hiwa Abdullah said the father, who had come to the playground with his children on the Eid al-Fitr festival, tried to prevent the suicide bomber from setting off his explosives but failed.

"The father and a child aged seven died and 20 children were wounded," Abdullah said.

Jawdat Abdullah, a spokesman for the hospital in Tuz, about 200km north of Baghdad near the oil city of Kirkuk, said the facility had received the bodies of a man and a child.

Police captain Abdullah said the suicide bomber had survived the attack and had been transferred to a hospital in Kirkuk with multiple injuries. One of his legs had been torn off in the blast and he was in serious condition.

Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan and which began in Iraq for Sunni Arabs yesterday, is traditionally a day when families visit relatives and head to public parks for picnics and relaxation.

The post-Ramadan celebrations in the capital had already been marred by a suicide bomber who drove his car into an Internet cafe full of young men hours after they began. At least eight people were killed and 25 were wounded.

The US military, meanwhile, tried to explain why women and children had been killed in its air raid near Lake Tharthar, a massive body of water about 100km northwest of Baghdad and a redoubt of the insurgency.

A first air strike killed four insurgents after intelligence reports had indicated that members of al-Qaeda in Iraq were meeting near the lake, once a popular fishing spot of the late dictator Saddam Hussein.

But survivors regrouped at another location south of the lake and coalition forces and insurgents exchanged small arms fire at a building there, the military said.

"Responding in self-defense, supporting aircraft engaged the enemy threat," a statement said, referring to a second air strike.

"After securing the area, the ground force assessed 15 terrorists, six women and nine children were killed, two suspects, one woman and three children were wounded, and one suspected terrorist was detained," it said.

The injured were treated by a US-led coalition doctor and taken to a nearby military facility for further treatment, US commanders said, adding that a review of information from the scene was ongoing.

"We regret that civilians are hurt or killed while coalition forces search to rid Iraq of terrorism," said military spokesman Major Brad Leighton.

"These terrorists chose to deliberately place innocent Iraqi women and children in danger by their actions and presence," he said.
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