BAGHDAD, July 31: Four days after US troops killed several passers-by in Baghdad during the hunt for Saddam Hussein, the US commander in Iraq admitted on Thursday that innocent people had died, but stopped short of accepting blame.

“On the issue of the innocent civilians that were killed and injured in that raid, we established some...traffic control points to isolate the area that we were operating in,” Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez told a news conference in answer to questions about the bloody raid.

Angry neighbours accused the Task Force 20 special unit hunting Saddam’s inner circle of failing to block all the side roads leading to a house they were raiding on Sunday in Baghdad’s upscale Mansour neighbourhood. When a car strayed into the fire zone, soldiers blasted it with machineguns.

US soldiers and medical staff at a nearby hospital told Reuters five men, including a teenager, were killed.

Sanchez said he had heard that “up to five” had died and suggested the car had run through a checkpoint.

“The car that was taken under fire, either it was panic or the soldiers on the ground...made a judgment call that the vehicle was trying to run the traffic control point...and that’s when they were taken under fire and killed.—Reuters