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US troops again fire on crowds
30/04/2003 10:13 - (SA)
Dubai - US troops opened fire on Wednesday for the second time in just over a day on an angry crowd in the Iraqi town of Falluja, near Baghdad, and local people said at least one person was killed.
A report from the Arabic television network Al-Jazeera said that 7 000 demonstrators were rallying against the US presence in the country in the wake of the killings on Monday evening.
The demonstration was led by the Muslim Brotherhood in its first appearance after the collapse of the Iraqi regime, Al-Jazeera said.
The demonstrators chanted anti-US slogans while US helicopters flew over the city, it said.
When asked if he had information on a shooting in the town, Centcom spokesperson Stewart Upton said "the soldiers retain the right to defend themselves" but that he was "unable to confirm (a shooting) at this time".
Centcom said paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division were fired upon on Monday by 25 armed civilians mixed with a crowd of 200 protestors.
The paratroopers returned fire, wounding at least seven of the armed individuals.
However, witnesses in the town, west of Baghdad, said 13 Iraqis were killed by the US troops.
US Captain Jeff Wilbur, a civil affairs officer for the 1st Battalion's 325 Airborne regimen, told Associated Press that US forces were investigating whether protesters had fired on troops. He said it
was not clear whether any Americans were hurt in the incident.
City officials who witnessed the gunfire said they saw or heard no shooting from among the protesters.
Some local people said they believed as many as four people might have been killed and said the demonstrators had been unarmed. Al-Jazeera television said two died. "One was killed for sure," Ziad al-Ara, an aide working for the local Iraqi administration, told the news agency Reuters.
-News24-Sapa
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