BAGHDAD, Dec 1: A top US military commander said on Monday that 54 guerillas, and not a single civilian, were believed killed in deadly clashes in the Iraqi town of Samarra, but he acknowledged the toll was based entirely on estimates gleaned from troop debriefings.

Not a single Iraqi body was recovered by US forces from the scene of Sunday afternoon’s clashes following ambushes against two heavily armed currency exchange convoys and another convoy of engineers, admitted the US Army’s deputy director of operations in Iraq, Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt.

“There were 54 estimated killed, 22 estimated wounded and one confirmed in detention,” said Gen Kimmitt.

“The reports that we have are from initial battlefield reports.”

Challenged about what had happened to the bodies of the 54 militants said to have been killed, Gen Kimmitt said: “I would suspect that the enemy would have carried them away and brought them back to where their initial base was.”

Asked about reports from senior police and hospital officials in the town that eight civilians had been killed and dozens more wounded, the US general insisted: “We have no such reports whether from medical authorities or police.

“We don’t have any reports of collateral damage or killing or wounding of innocent civilians. If we get these reports, they will be included in the investigation.”

Gen Kimmitt defended the intensity of the response from the 93 US soldiers, who had riposted with tank cannon-fire in a heavily built up area.

“There were soldiers being fired at. Our soldiers were performing a mission.”

The general acknowledged that the one guerilla now confirmed in custody was a sharp reduction on the 11 claimed captured by the commanding colonel in Samarra earlier in the day.

“Some of those early reports might have been a bit off,” he said.

The US official also sought to play down earlier reports that many of the attackers wore the uniforms of the disbanded Fedayeen militia of the former Iraqi government.—AFP