U.S. defends raid on compound; Shiites say mosque was attacked

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Facing a scathing backlash from Shiite Muslim leaders a day after a deadly U.S.-Iraqi raid in Baghdad, top U.S. military officials defended the mission Monday, saying it was a "hugely successful" operation against an insurgent hideout packed with weapons used against soldiers and civilians.

Lt. Col. Sean Swindell, whose unit participated, said the mission was led by Iraqi soldiers and targeted an insurgent group based at a compound in northern Baghdad. Sixteen Iraqis were killed, all combatants, U.S. officials have said.

The U.S. version of events differed sharply from that of Shiite officials and Baghdad residents near the site of the raid, who for a second day voiced anger over the operation, saying U.S. and Iraqi troops targeted a Shiite mosque and gunned down innocent worshippers in the half-light of evening prayers.

Hard to identify

Identifying a mosque isn't always easy for non-Arabic speakers, since some mosques don't have the characteristic domes and minarets. Many Shiites, who were forbidden from building mosques during Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, converted ordinary neighborhood buildings into places of worship after the U.S. invasion.

The site of Sunday's raid had been recently converted into a mosque, Shiite leaders said.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a coalition spokesman, said the complex had three buildings and that military officials determined that two were off-limits. The third, which they entered, was under constant guard, he said.

"There was no resistance at all from the mosque. There were no weapons during prayers," said Muhammad Ridha, 39, who works at the complex. "The purpose of the raid was to kill Shiites."

The rejection of such characterizations by Swindell, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group, and other U.S. officers came in television appearances and late-night conversations with reporters aimed at bolstering the U.S. version. U.S. officials had been publicly silent about the raid for more than 24 hours.

Their comments came as the U.S. presence — long hailed, or at least tolerated, by Iraqi Shiites as a bulwark against factional violence — faced its most precarious moment in months, said U.S. diplomats and military officers, political analysts and Iraqi officials.

Political leaders Monday canceled a round of negotiations over the formation of a new Iraqi government and instead huddled with U.S. diplomats in an attempt to rein in the burgeoning crisis.

Meanwhile, the Shiite-led provincial government in Baghdad suspended all cooperation with U.S.-led forces until an investigation into the raid is conducted.

The rancorous standoff coincided with yet another devastating day of violence, with as many as 60 people killed across Iraq, including dozens of military recruits in a bombing in the northern city of Mosul.

That suicide bombing took place at an Iraqi army recruiting office near a U.S.-Iraq military base about 20 miles east of Tal Afar, an ancient city not far from the Syrian border. The bomber, wearing an explosives vest, struck shortly after noon, killing at least 40 and wounding 30 others, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said.

Further complicating U.S. efforts is the fact that those killed Sunday are believed to have been followers of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Once a renegade distrusted by the Iraqi government, Sadr has spent the past year cementing his status as a political insider, incorporating members of his Mahdi Army militia into the Iraqi police force. More than 30 of his followers won seats in the new parliament.

"I was more surprised that the U.S. took on the Mahdi militia as it did," said Michael O'Hanlon, an analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "We handled Sadr's forces very well in 2004 with a mix of carrots and sticks, and we have to be prepared to fight him again, but any time you fight him or someone associated with him, you run the risk of taking on all his legions, and that would be a huge negative."

While the enmity between U.S. and Shiite leaders may have peaked as a result of the raid, relations have been souring for several months.

In December, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad — long praised as an evenhanded broker by all of Iraq's factions — began warning political leaders forming a new government to put the security apparatus outside the control of Shiite militia leaders.

The pointed public request was a thinly veiled swipe at Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, who has ties to the Badr Organization, a Shiite group.

Raid condemned

On Monday, Jabr condemned the Sunday raid, telling Al-Arabiya television that "innocent people inside the mosque offering prayer at sunset were killed," according to news services.

Jawad Maliki, an official with the Shiite Dawa party led by Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari, said the raid was "aimed to provoke a civil war for political purposes during a critical political period of the process of forming a government."

Maliki also accused U.S. forces of "killing this number of people after handcuffing and torturing them."

Witnesses said U.S. and Iraqi forces stormed the building at about 6 p.m., just as evening prayers were beginning, and shot several unarmed worshipers and officer workers. No evidence was provided to substantiate those claims.

A visit Monday to the site — which local residents said was a former office complex converted into a community center, with a mosque, a school and an office of the Dawa party — revealed inner and outer walls pockmarked by bullet holes.

Shiite militia officials and major politicians have all said the structure attacked was the al-Mustafa mosque.

Residents carried at least 21 coffins from the mosque at 11 a.m., some draped in Iraqi flags or black mourning banners, and loaded them into the backs of pickup trucks escorted by armed men chanting anti-American slogans.

U.S. commanders said that during the raid, shots were fired from inside the compound and from surrounding buildings as soon as the soldiers arrived, and that the U.S. mostly an advisory role. The lead unit, they said, was a special-forces battalion known as the Iraqi counterterrorism force.

"They were the drivers and the machine-gunners and the breachers," said Swindell, the lieutenant colonel.

Swindell said the insurgent group based at the complex had been tracked for at least a month. He said he did not know if the group had a name, or what its religious affiliation was, but that members were believed to have tortured and killed at least three Iraqi counterterrorism-force members.

About 50 Iraqi and 20 U.S. soldiers conducted the raid, Swindell said, adding that Iraqi troops killed all but one or two of the slain insurgents.

"There was nobody praying when we hit the objective, they were firing weapons at us," he said. "We had resistance the whole time, for about 45 minutes."

In a statement Monday, the U.S. military said 18 suspected insurgents were detained in the assault, and three were wounded. The military said weapons found inside the compound included 32 AK-47 assault rifles, two rocket-propelled grenade launchers and 12 "crush switch indicators" used to make bombs.

Staged scene

In a conference call today, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, commander of the Multinational Corps-Iraq , said the Iraqi soldiers had told U.S. troops the targeted building was not a mosque. He also said that footage aired on Iraqi television Sunday and Monday showing unarmed men lying dead and Korans scattered at the scene of the attack had been staged.

"It's important to remember we had an Iraqi unit with us, an Iraqi unit of 50 folks, and they told us point blank that this was not a mosque," Chiarelli said. "It's not Mustafa mosque. Mustafa mosque is located six blocks north on our maps of this location."

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, said he called Khalilzad and that they decided to form an Iraqi-U.S. committee to investigate.

Information from Knight Ridder Newspapers and The Associated Press is included in this report.