By ANTARA News/AFP
Baghdad : At least nine people were killed and 35 wounded in a US air strike in southeast Baghdad on Monday following a mortar attack on a nearby military outpost, Iraqi security officials told AFP.
They said a US military outpost in the Al-Rustumiyah neighbourhood came under mortar attack, prompting US forces to return fire and call in air support.
Nine people were killed, one of them a six-year-old girl when the US forces returned fire, a defence ministry official said.
The military said the outpost came under mortar fire and the overhead surveillance was able to positively identify three “criminals.”
“An air weapons team arrived on the scene and engaged the mortar crew with a Hellfire missile,” it said, adding that an aircraft also dropped a “low-yield” bomb on the mortar site destroying the weapon.
Colonel Bill Buckner, spokesman for the military, denied there were civilian casualties.