US Troops Kill 13 unarmed demonstrators in Baghdad

US Troops Kill 13 unarmed demonstrators in Baghdad

By Edmund Blair

FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. troops killed 13 Iraqi demonstrators west of Baghdad overnight, witnesses said on Tuesday, in bloodshed sure to inflame anti-American anger.

U.S. officers said they fired in self defense.

Witnesses in Falluja, 30 miles outside the capital, told Reuters the troops opened fire on several hundred unarmed demonstrators who had been demanding the soldiers vacate a school they were using as a barracks.

Falluja hospital director Ahmed Ghanim al-Ali said 13 people had been killed and at least 75 wounded in the late night incident. There were widely conflicting accounts of what had happened.

The shooting in Falluja, and a clash between U.S. forces and Iraqi fighters in the northern city of Mosul on Monday in which six Iraqis were killed, punctured some of the optimism generated by a mass meeting convened by the United States in Baghdad to kickstart the transition to democracy after the fall of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

"Our soul and our blood we will sacrifice to you martyrs," mourners in Falluja chanted as they buried their dead at a cemetery while U.S. helicopters flew overhead.

"It was a peaceful demonstration. They did not have any weapons," said local Sunni Muslim cleric, Kamal Shaker Mahmoud. "They were asking the Americans to leave the school so they could use it."