US bombs suspect house, kills family: police

By Amer Amery

BAIJI, Iraq (Reuters) – A U.S. air strike on a house in
northern Iraq killed six members of an Iraqi family, prompting
anger on Tuesday among minority Sunni Arab political leaders
and the local police chief.

The U.S. military said aircraft bombed the building in the
northern oil refining town of Baiji late on Monday when three
men were spotted from the air going into the house after
digging a hole that troops suspected was for a roadside bomb.

Baiji police said six people were killed and three wounded
when the house was obliterated. Among the casualties were two
police officers, one killed, the other wounded, they added. The
youngest casualty was 14, the local police chief said.

“I absolutely confirm there were no terrorists in this
house,” police chief Colonel Sufyan Mustafa told Reuters.

“Even if there had been, why didn’t they surround the area
and detain the terrorists instead?”

Grievances over U.S. military action are widespread among
the Sunni Arab minority that dominated Iraq under Saddam
Hussein, and the latest controversy comes as Sunnis wrangle for
a role in a new government following an election last month
that their leaders said was rigged by the Shi’ite majority.

A handful of international election monitors are coming to
Baghdad to try to help resolve the row over the results, but
the Electoral Commission said again it was confident only an
insignificant number of ballots would be ruled out for fraud
and that it would be able to confirm results within a few days.

A statement issued by the U.S. 101st Airborne Division in
response to an inquiry about the deaths in Baiji said soldiers
monitoring film from a reconnaissance drone spotted three men
apparently digging a hole by a road around 9 p.m. (1800 GMT).

Pilots were alerted, the military said: “The individuals…
were followed from the air to a nearby building. Coalition
forces employed precision-guided munitions on the structure.”

A U.S. spokesmen gave no casualty figure and had no
immediate comment on whether a roadside bomb had been found.

A local official of the biggest Sunni Arab political group,
the Iraqi Islamic Party, called for demonstrations: “This is a
historic crime and another catastrophe for the people of Baiji.

“If there were gunmen or criminals in that house, is it
right to blow up the whole family?” said Ali al-Ajeel.

Hussein al-Falluji, a prominent lawyer and a national
leader of the Sunni-dominated Iraqi Accordance Front, said:
“Once again the occupiers have shown their barbarism. They
never learn from their mistakes… People’s resentment is
increasing.”

Last week, the military said an air strike killed 10 people
near the nearby town of Hawija after pilots tracked men who had
been spotted digging by a roadside.

REFINERY REOPENS

Baiji has seen considerable rebel violence, including
efforts by insurgents to disrupt oil and fuel flows through its
refinery, the biggest in Iraq. The closure of the refinery last
month has caused serious shortages in fuel across the country,
although the plant reopened again late on Monday.

Vital exports from northern Iraq to Turkey’s Mediterranean
port of Ceyhan remain at a standstill; data this week showed
Iraqi oil exports in December were the lowest since the war and
roughly half the sanctions-hit level under Saddam.

U.S. forces have used air power increasingly of late.

Official data show the average in the last quarter of 2005
was 54 strikes per month, compared with five strikes per month
in the first quarter; the recent rate was comparable to the 56
per month seen in the second half of 2004 when troops fought a
Shi’ite uprising and stormed the Sunni city of Falluja.

U.S. commanders say they make every effort to minimize the
risk to civilians in air raids.

The U.S. government says it will start withdrawing its
160,000 ground troops from Iraq as Iraqi forces become more
able to combat revolt against the Baghdad authorities. But
analysts expect U.S. air power to remain a key factor in the
conflict.

One of Iraq’s electoral commissioners, Adel al-Lamy, said
only 50 to 70 ballot boxes out of some 31,000 used in the
December 15 parliamentary election would be scrapped because of
irregularities and this would not greatly affect any results.

Preliminary tallies last month showed the ruling Shi’ite
Islamist Alliance close to maintaining its narrow majority
despite a strong turnout among Sunni Arabs, who had boycotted
the vote to the interim parliament in January.

Sunni leaders have cried foul and demanded a rerun; the
United Nations and U.S. officials have said the vote appears to
have been fair, however. In a gesture toward the disaffected,
four experts are flying in to Baghdad this week to look over
the process, though their mandate is strictly limited.

Electoral officials in Iraq gave differing accounts of
whether at least some of the four observers, two Arabs, a
Canadian and a European, had begun work. Officials from their
International Mission for Iraqi Elections said their identities
would be kept secret for their own protection.

(Additional reporting by Hiba Moussa, Aseel Kami, Mariam
Karouny and Gideon Long in Baghdad, Ghaswan al-Jibouri in
Tikrit and Aref Mohammed in Kirkuk)