Iraq Sunnis cry "atrocity" over US raids

[Menydh]

Iraq Sunnis cry "atrocity" over US raids

Reuters
May 15, 2006

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces killed over 40 Iraqi rebels in raids and air strikes near Baghdad, the military said on Monday, but leading clerics from the Sunni minority accused the Americans of an "atrocity" that killed two dozen civilians.

Two U.S. helicopter crew were killed when their aircraft was shot down during the battles on Sunday in the rural area around Latifiya and Yusufiya, south of the capital, where the military has said al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been active.

The complaint from the Muslim Clerics Association, the main Sunni Arab religious grouping, came at a sensitive time as U.S. officials wait anxiously for minority Sunni political leaders to confirm their participation in a national unity government.

Saddam Hussein, whose overthrow in the U.S. invasion of 2003 deprived Sunnis of the power they once held over the Shi'ite Muslim majority, refused to plead in court on Monday when read a formal charge sheet for crimes against humanity in the killing, torture or jailing of 399 Shi'ites from the town of Dujail.

The judge entered a not guilty plea for the former president, who insisted he was still head of state.

The U.S. military said its troops killed 41 people over the preceding two days, all of them insurgents, referred to either as "al Qaeda associates" or "terrorists". In doing so it lost its second helicopter in the area in six weeks.
Among those killed, according to a military statement, was a man suspected in the shooting down of a helicopter on April 1.

U.S. military statements said several women and children were "inadvertently wounded by shrapnel" and treated in the site or evacuated, but made no mention of civilians being killed.


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