A U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party before
dawn Wednesday in western Iraq, killing more than 40 people, Iraqi
officials said. The U.S. military said it could not confirm the report
and was investigating.
Lt. Col Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of Ramadi, said between 42
and 45 people were killed in the attack, which took place about 2:45
a.m. in a remote desert area near the border with Syria and Jordan. He
said the dead included 15 children and 10 women.
Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi, put the death toll
at 45.
Associated Press Television News obtained videotape showing a truck
containing bodies of people who were allegedly killed in the incident.
Most of the bodies were wrapped in blankets and other cloths, but the
footage showed at least eight uncovered, bloody bodies, several of them
children. One of the children was headless.

The U.S. Army said Thursday it killed around 40
people in an attack on suspected foreign fighters in Iraq near the
Syrian border, but disputed reports that the victims were members of a
wedding party. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of
operations for the U.S. military in Iraq, told Reuters the attack early
Wednesday was within the military's rules of engagement. "We conducted
an operation about 85 kilometers (53 miles) southwest of
al-Qaim...against suspected foreign fighters in a safe house," Kimmitt
said. "We took ground fire and we returned fire." Kimmitt said there
were no indications that the victims of the attack were part of a
wedding party. He said a large amount of money, Syrian passports and
satellite communications equipment had been found at the site after the
attack.
[...]
Dubai-based Al Arabiya television showed pictures of several shrouded
bodies lined up on a dirt road. Men were shown digging graves and
lowering bodies, one of a child, into the pits while relatives wept.
"The U.S. planes dropped more than 100 bombs on us," an unidentified
man who said he was from the village said on Al Arabiya. "They hit two
homes where the wedding was being held and then they leveled the whole
village. No bullets were fired by us, nothing was happening," he added.
Guests and relatives at Arab weddings often fire guns in the air in
jubilation.