By DPA
Baghdad : At least 25 persons were killed and 40 wounded in a US raid on a village near Baquba, north of the Iraqi capital, amid contradictory accounts that describe the victims either as civilians or as militants.
Independent Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency, citing a police source, said at least 25 civilians were killed and 40 injured, including women and children, when US airplanes attacked the Gezani al-Imam village north-west of Baquba at dawn.
The number of casualties is most likely to increase as many bodies had yet to be recovered from the civilian houses destroyed during the attack, added the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
US helicopters fired a number of missiles against houses in the village at dawn, local residents said.
But according to a statement by the US military, coalition forces targeted a commander believed to be associated with members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard – Quds Force – in the dawn operation.
Intelligence had indicated he was involved in criminal activity and in helping the movement of various weapons from Iran to the Iraqi capital, the statement added.
Coalition forces had come under heavy fire from armed men when they entered the targeted area and returned fire, the US military said. Coalition forces then called in air support in the gun battle.
But the al-Arabiya news broadcaster earlier said the armed men were not likely to be terrorists and that they were carrying weapons to protect themselves from militants who are spreading through the city.
Diyala has become one of the most dangerous regions in recent months in Iraq, with members of the Al-Qaeda terror network streaming into the region from other areas of the country.
Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, is 60 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
Meanwhile, VOI reported that two Shiite clerics were found murdered in their homes over the past two days in the predominantly Shiite city of Basra.
One of the victims taught at a religious school and the other at an Islamic university, the report said.
The latest murders follow events in September when several representatives of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shiites, were murdered in Basra.
The murders triggered speculation that they were not carried out by Sunnis, but rather by rival Shiite groups, possibly supported by Iran.