U.S. soldiers opened fire after their convoy was struck by a roadside bomb at a checkpoint south of Baghdad, killing at least five Iraqis, including two policemen and three civilians, police said Sunday.
The firing occurred late Saturday near the police checkpoint in Yussifiyah, nine miles south of Baghdad, Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said. The U.S. military said it was investigating the report.
A U.S. soldier assigned to the Task Force Baghdad also was killed in a roadside bomb explosion on Sunday, the military said, although it did not say where the attack occurred.
Seven Ukrainian soldiers and one Kazakh soldier serving in Iraq were killed in an explosion while loading bombs that could be used by warplanes, it was announced Sunday.
Meanwhile, a U.S. warplane bombed a house mistaken for an "insurgency hideout" in northern Iraq, killing at least five people. During a U.S. army search for a suspected "insurgent" leader, an F-16 jet dropped a 500-pound laser guided bomb on a home south of the main northern city of Mosul Saturday, the military said in a statement.
"The house was not the intended target for the air strike. The intended target was another location nearby," it said.
"The multinational force in Iraq deeply regrets the loss of possibly innocent lives." Five people died in the pre-dawn strike, a U.S. military spokesperson said. The military promised an investigation into the incident.
In the meantime, The Sunday Telegraph reported that the British government will this week announce the politically risky move of sending up to 650 more troops to Iraq to provide security during the January 30 election.
