Iraqi police accused U.S. soldiers on Sunday of shooting dead at least three civilians after an attack on their patrol, but the U.S. military said the dead men were insurgents, Reuters reported. The differing accounts of the shooting on Saturday in the town of Baiji, 180 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, is not uncommon in such incidents in Iraq. Lieutenant Colonel Najim Ahmed of Baiji police said four civilians had been killed and six wounded when U.S. soldiers fired at a passing car filled with civilians after a roadside bomb exploded nearby. "U.S forces began shooting randomly. Civilians were in the car," he said. An Iraqi spokesman for the local Joint Coordination Centre which liaises between Iraqi security forces and the U.S. military, giving a similar account of the incident, said the victims were three Iraqi soldiers. Iraqi security officials said the U.S. forces later handed over the bodies of three dead men to their relatives, while six wounded men were taken to a U.S. base in Siniya. U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ed Loomis said U.S. soldiers had come under fire from five civilian vehicles while on patrol north of Baiji. "The soldiers engaged the two lead vehicles, killing three of the gunmen. Three vehicles following the lead vehicles stopped and their occupants escaped on foot," he said in a statement in reply to questions from Reuters. He said six men had been detained and several AK-47 rifles seized. There were signs that at least one of the cars had been rigged for an improvised explosive device. No U.S. soldiers were wounded in the incident, he added.
