By Xinhua,
Tikrit, Iraq : An overnight U.S. air strike hit a village in Iraq’s Salahudin province, killing eight people, a provincial police source said on Thursday.
The incident occurred when U.S. troops conducted a search operation late on Wednesday in the Mazra’a village near town Beiji, some 200 km north of Baghdad, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
During the operation, a group of people observed trying to flee the village in a vehicle, prompting a U.S. aircraft to fire a missile on their vehicle, destroying the vehicle and killing all the people aboard, the source said.
Earlier on Wednesday, U.S. ground forces detained seven suspected insurgents and destroyed two of their cars in central Beiji town, according to the source.
The U.S. military did not confirmed the two incidents which came as U.S.-Iraqi forces are conducting a major offensive in the neighboring province of Nineveh to uproot al-Qaida militants from their latest strongholds in Iraq.