February 11, 2007	Sunday	Muharram 22, 1428

BAGHDAD, Feb 10: US helicopters targeting insurgents mistakenly killed at least five allied Kurdish militiamen in the northern city of Mosul.

The military also reported three more American soldiers killed in combat, pushing the US death toll to 33 in the first eight days of the month.

Officials said the Kurds were killed just after midnight on Friday as they guarded a branch of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a political party led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a key supporter of US efforts in Iraq.

The US military said the strike was launched after American ground forces spotted armed men in a bunker near a building they thought was being used to make bombs for Al Qaida in Iraq. The troops called out in Arabic and Kurdish telling the men to put down their weapons and also fired warning shots before the helicopters opened fire, the military said.

Five men later determined to be Kurdish police officers were killed and nine others were detained, the US military said, offering condolences to the families of those who died. Kurdish officials put the casualty toll at eight killed and six wounded.

Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman denounced the airstrike. “This is not a good sign for the new security plan that they (US forces) have started,” he said.

However, a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Azad Jundiyan, said the party realised the airstrike was a mistake. “We are allied with the coalition; it was a friendly fire incident, not an intentionally hostile act,” he said.

Jundiyan identified the dead as peshmerga – Kurdish militiamen who once battled Saddam Hussein’s regime. Many peshmerga have been incorporated into the Iraqi army since the US-led invasion.

The incident far from Baghdad underlined a rise in violence in northern Iraq, where it is feared some insurgents are fleeing to avoid the security crackdown in the capital.—AP