Daily Star:
At least 13 Iraqi farmers were killed in US raids in farmland north of Baghdad near the town of Baqouba, police and a human rights group said Tuesday - an accusation disputed by the American military, which claimed the victims were "terrorists." In the latest US casualties, two soldiers missing in Iraq for three days have been found dead, their bodies showing signs of "barbaric" torture, an Iraqi general said, and Al-Qaeda in Iraq said it had slit their throats.
Iraqi police, relatives of those killed in Baqouba and a local human rights organization said the victims were all poultry farm workers who had been sleeping in the fields of Bushaheen village in an area known as Al-Salam ("peace") when US troops raided the area.
The US military said that its troops came under small arms fire from the rooftop of a house when they arrived at their target.
"The ground force returned fire, killing nine armed terrorists on the rooftop, and an additional two armed terrorists ... were killed by coalition aircraft supporting fire," it said.
The military said a helicopter providing air backup to the troops hit a power line, forcing it to make an emergency landing.
"Three armed suspects were then killed by another coalition aircraft as they attempted to attack the downed aircraft," it said, adding that another "terrorist" was killed by a US sniper in a separate clash.
But the main hospital in Baqouba said it received 13 bodies from Bushaheen, most of them killed by gunshots to the head and abdomen. It also admitted four wounded people.
At the village, an AFP correspondent saw 13 graves that had been dug to bury the dead.
Hussam Shamel said he, his three brothers and father were sleeping in the fields with other workers because of the summer heat and fears of theft from the chicken pens when US troops descended on the area. "I hid and saw them shoot my brother Wissam after he started running," Shamel told AFP.
He said a second brother, Hisham, was also killed in the raid, while his father and a third brother were missing.
Iraqi police and Hadi al-Azzawi of a human rights organization in Baqouba backed the villagers' story, adding that 10 people were also detained during the operation.
A spokesman for the US military, Major General William Caldwell, later insisted that those killed were "terrorists" and not civilians, as he announced that the remains of the two missing soldiers had been recovered. He declined to comment on how they died.
An Internet statement claimed the new leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq "slit the throats" of the two men but its authenticity seemed questionable. The same group had said in a statement on Monday it was holding the men, but Caldwell dismissed that.
"God Almighty has graced the leader Abu Hamza al-Muhajer ... with the implementation of the sentence," said a statement from the Mujahideen Shura Council.
Caldwell said a joint US-Iraqi force found the bodies of Privates Thomas Lowell Tucker, 25, and Kristian Menchaca, 23, on Monday night dumped at an electrical plant.
Iraqi Defense Ministry official Major General Abdel-Aziz Mohammad said earlier that the soldiers "were found in the Youssefiyya area near the power station and unfortunately their bodies show that they had been tortured and then killed viciously."
The US military launched a massive search for the soldiers involving aircraft and 8,000 US troops and Iraqi security forces.
Caldwell said that during the search operation coalition forces also killed the "right-hand man" of slain Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Iraqi Mansour Suleiman al-Mashhadani was killed Friday by US forces in Youssefiyya, not far from where the two soldiers were abducted, Caldwell said.
Meanwhile, a car bomb killed seven people in a crowded Baghdad market, while a roadside bomb killed two in the city.
In Basra, a suicide bomber attacked a crowd of elderly and disabled people as they gathered to collect pensions, wounding five people.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Tuesday that Tokyo would withdraw its 550 soldiers, while the Iraqi foreign minister said the southern province of Maysan will be the next area to be transferred to the control of Iraqi forces
"The next province that will follow, according to my discussions with Baghdad, will be the province of Maysan," Hoshyar Zebari told a joint news conference in London with his British counterpart, Margaret Beckett.
The comments follow Iraqi Premier Nuri al-Maliki's announcement on Monday that his forces would take over security in Muthanna in July. - Agencies
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