IRAQ: US commanders ordered an investigation yesterday after they admitted mistakenly bombing a civilian house in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing at least five people.
Iraqis said 14 people died in the bombing in the village of Aaytha. Television images showed 14 freshly-dug graves.
The dead included seven children, according to a photographer at the scene.
The US military said five people had been killed. It said an F-16 jet dropped a 500-lb satellite-guided bomb on the house in support of troops who were trying to catch an "anti-Iraqi force cell leader".
"The house was not the intended target for the air strike. The intended target was another location nearby," the military said on Saturday.
"Multi-National Force Iraq deeply regrets the loss of possibly innocent lives." It was a rare admission for the US military.
When at least 40 people were killed in a bombing raid on a house in a village near the Syrian border last year, the military said the dead were "foreign fighters", while several witnesses said they were guests at a wedding.
Yesterday the Iraqi police also accused US troops of mistakenly killing five people when they opened fire after a roadside bomb blast just south of Baghdad on Saturday night. The US military had no comment.
Seven Ukrainian soldiers and one Kazakh died near the town of Suwaira yesterday when one of the fighter planes' bombs they were loading exploded.
As the insurgency continued in Samarra, the deputy police chief, Mohammed Mudhafir, was shot dead in his car.
There were also reports that a journalist with the French paper Liberation and her translator had been kidnapped, and South Korean officials said they were investigating claims that two of their citizens had been abducted.
Meanwhile, Britain is preparing to send 650 more soldiers to southern Iraq in the expectation of increased violence before the January 30th elections, UK defence officials said yesterday. The decision could be announced as early as today.
The 1st Battalion Royal Highland Fusiliers has 650 soldiers on standby in Cyprus to fly to Iraq this week.