Friendly fire kills five

2005-03-24 21:54

Fallujah - Clashes erupted on Thursday between Iraqi forces and rebels in the former insurgent citadel of Fallujah, while five people died in a friendly fire incident near the Syrian border between Iraqi police and soldiers.

"There are clashes between the army and police and insurgents, but we don't have a toll yet," the defence ministry official said.

An AFP reporter said shots were heard from the city's northwestern Jolan district and Iraqi police sealed off the district about 13:30.

At the Jolan district's medical centre, hospital clerk Abbas Ahmed said four dead Iraqi soldiers were brought to the facility, but the defence ministry could not confirm the toll.

US forces assaulted the western Iraqi city in November, driving out insurgents who had turned it into their nerve centre for attacks across Iraq.

In a friendly fire accident, Iraqi police and army opened fire on one another in Rabia, 130km northwest of Mosul, killing three soldiers and two policemen, Major General Mohamed al-Jaburi told AFP.

The shooting took place at 11:00 when the soldiers opened fire on police thinking they were rebels, in an area which is rife with insurgent activity, Jaburi said.

In the Kirkuk area, southeast of Mosul, two men were killed when a roadside bomb they were planting on a road in Tarkiyah near the oil-rich northern city detonated prematurely, said an Iraqi army spokesperson.

Three insurgents were killed and one wounded in clashes with an Iraqi army patrol near Al-Azein, south of Kirkuk, he added.

In Shurgat, west of Kirkuk, one Iraqi soldier was killed and two more were wounded when three mortar rounds fell on their base, said Captain Ahmed Salam of the army.

Three Iraqi soldiers were kidnapped near the refinery town of Baiji, south of Kirkuk, as they travelled in a taxi, said Iraqi police.

Further south in Bir Ahmed, east of Saddam Hussein's northern hometown of Tikrit, police said they found the body of Othman Ara, a 44-year-old contractor working with US forces.

In Balad, 70km north of Baghdad, an Iraqi truck driver was killed by gunmen as he was changing a flat tire, said Lieutenant Colonel Adel Abdullah of the town's police.

And in the ongoing targeting of religious figures, a Sunni imam, Aziz Mohammed, was gunned down on Wednesday in Jurf al-Sakhr, south of Baghdad, said a spokesperson for the Sunni Waqf, or religious administration.

He said it was the third killing of Sunni clerics in 10 days.

- AFP