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BAGHDAD: The US military Sunday acknowledged it fired on a group of
its anti-Qaeda allies in Iraq in an attack the leader of the group
said killed three people and sparked angry protests.
A military spokesman, Major Brad Leighton, said
members of the Awakening group fighting al-Qaeda in the village of
Jurf al-Sakher about 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of Baghdad
mistakenly fired on US forces, who returned fire.
“We came under fire first and returned fire.
We believe the [Awakening] mistakenly targeted us and we may have
killed three [Awakening],” Leighton told Agence France-Presse.
The leader of the group, Sabah al-Janabi, as
well as local police official Ali al-Lami said that a US helicopter
on Saturday fired on the group, killing three members.
The incident, coming on the heels of numerous
other incidents in which a total of 19 group members have been
killed, sparked mass resignations from the US-sponsored Awakening,
according to Janabi.
“It was the third incident in a month. We have
lost 19 men while 12 have been injured because of coalition
attacks,” said Janabi.
“The group, which comprises 110 members,
resigned in protest at organized assassinations by the coalition
forces,” he added.
The US military said it was not certain that the
Awakening members had indeed resigned.
“There was a peaceful demonstration [by about
200 Awakening members] during which the lead sheikh, Sabah al-Janabi,
gave a speech addressing the issues. [He] did say that the community
still wants to work with coalition forces,” it said in a statement
to AFP.
The Awakening groups began in western Anbar
province where Sunni tribal leaders in September 2006 turned on
their former al-Qaeda allies and caused them to flee.
Since then they have sprung up across the
country, supported and paid for by the US military which sees them
as essential to help hold areas cleared by an American “surge”
of some 30,000 troops.
US commanders say there are now around 130 such
groups across Iraq with a total of about 80,000 volunteers, 80
percent of them Sunni and the remainder Shiite.
-- AFP
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