U.S. probes raid that killed 8 Iraqis

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The U.S. military said it planned to investigate whether appropriate force was used when soldiers called in an airstrike early Wednesday during a raid that left eight Iraqis dead.

Four men and four women were killed in the predawn clash at a house in Baqubah, a center of insurgent fighting 35 miles north of the capital.

Witnesses initially reported the incident as a mortar attack, but a written statement released by the Army on Wednesday said the house was targeted in a raid as troops searched for a suspected terrorist.

An Army spokesman said at a briefing Wednesday that the troops called in an airstrike after encountering small-arms fire.

"It was an escalation of force that occurred," said the spokesman, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell IV, at a briefing in the fortified Green Zone. "They did, in fact, ask for the people to come out of the home. They did not do that. Instead, they returned fire on the security forces."

But surviving family members and other witnesses said the attack was unprovoked.

A teenage girl said that her parents, brother and pregnant sister-in-law were among the dead and that she saw her family gunned down by the soldiers.

"We heard a boom, then shooting and shouting inside the house," said Enaam Jassim Mohammed. "I rushed to the place, I saw my father lying on the floor."

Mohammed said she was making breakfast when the soldiers entered the house.

"The Americans were yelling at the rest of the family," she said. "Then, the Americans opened fire at my father, my mother and the rest. My brother was coming toward them. He was also shot."

She said she ran into an adjoining room where she found her sister-in-law on the floor.

"I was trying to wake up my brother's wife, who was pregnant, hitting her on her face to wake up," she said. "But I discovered that she was killed after seeing the blood over the floor and her body."

Two of her brothers were detained, she said.

Another witness, interviewed on Iraqi television, said the troops shot first and continued to fire their weapons inside the house.

Caldwell confirmed that two injured Iraqis were detained. He would not give their identities and said it was not yet known whether they were suspected extremists.

He also declined to name the suspect being sought in the house, described in an Army statement as being "tied to extremist leaders of al-Qaida in Iraq in ... Diyala and Salahuddin provinces."

"Until we know whether or not we, in fact, got them, we would not want to state why we went there," Caldwell said. "If they're not the people in question, then those people would know we're after them for sure."