U.S. airstrike kills 8 Iraqi civilians: police

By Sabah al-Bazee

BAIJI, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi police said on Thursday a U.S. helicopter airstrike killed eight civilians, including two children, but U.S. forces said the six adults killed were militants suspected of links to a bombing network.

News of Wednesday's incident north of Baghdad broke on a day when the top U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said he expected to make further troop cuts by September.

The U.S. Senate approved a further $165 billion to wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan for another year after rejecting proposed timetables for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

The speed of drawing down the 155,000 U.S. troops in Iraq is a central issue in the November U.S. presidential election.

An Iraqi television station accused U.S. troops of shooting dead one of its cameramen as he walked to his Baghdad home. The U.S. military denied it had killed any civilians in the area.

The body of a second journalist, a reporter for al-Sharq newspaper, was found dumped in a field with nine other corpses in Diyala province, police and colleagues said.

Colonel Mudhher al-Qaisi, police chief in the town of Baiji, north of the capital, said a U.S. helicopter fired at a group of shepherds in a vehicle in a farming area on Wednesday night.

"This is a criminal act. It will make the relations between Iraqi citizens and the U.S. forces tense. This will negatively affect security improvements," Qaisi told Reuters.

The U.S. military said the incident happened when American soldiers, hunting members of a bombing network, tried to detain the occupants of a vehicle.

HOSTILE INTENT

"Coalition forces engaged the target vehicle's occupants, killing five terrorists, after the terrorists exhibited hostile intent and failed to comply with instructions to surrender. Two children in the vehicle were also killed," it said.

U.S. forces killed another militant nearby after he refused to surrender, a statement said. It did not say if a helicopter was involved.

Reuters pictures showed relatives of the dead standing beside corpses covered by white sheets outside a mosque in Baiji, an oil refining town 180 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad.

"There were two boys, one was eight and the other was 11," said police Major Ahmed Hussein.

United Nations officials have expressed concern at the number of civilians killed in airstrikes in Iraq.