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AMMARA/TIKRIT, Jan 10: A total of seven Iraqis including five civilians and two policemen were shot dead when British and US troops opened fire in two different incidents on Saturday.
Five Iraqis were killed, at least one of them shot by British soldiers, when a demonstration of unemployed workers turned violent in the southern city of Ammara on Saturday, a British military spokesman said.
"There have been five fatalities and one injured," Warrant Officer Paul Wightman told AFP.
Wightman said one of the dead was shot by British soldiers after he tried to hurl a grenade, but it was not immediately clear how the others died.
Several hundred unemployed workers demonstrated outside the local government building in Ammara Saturday morning when shots were fired from the crowd and Iraqi police returned fire, Wightman said.
The violence lasted until late afternoon as the British military sought to restore calm, he added.
TIKRIT KILLING: The US military confirmed that its soldiers mistakenly killed two Iraqi policemen overnight in Kirkuk as relatives of the dead men demanded compensation.
Major Josslyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division in Tikrit, said the policemen were shot after failing to identify themselves when they were being pursued by troops of the US 173rd Airborne Brigade after a shooting incident. "Two Iraqi police officers were killed yesterday after they failed to identify themselves to a coalition patrol," she said.
Aberle said the men were witnessed firing their weapons at a building and fled when US soldiers arrived at the scene. The soldiers gave chase, firing warning shots and calling for the policemen to halt. "The men refused to comply. The soldiers took a defensive position and fired on the men, killing one, wounding another and capturing a third. The wounded man died en route to hospital," Aberle said.
