US forces kill couple in raid on Iraqi house

U.S. troops stormed the house of a former army officer Saturday in northern Iraq, killing the man and his wife, wounding their 8-year-old daughter and unleashing anger among residents at tactics they deemed excessive, police said. The pre-dawn raid occurred near the village of Hawijah, a restive area about 130 miles north of Baghdad and west of the contested city of Kirkuk. Police identified the man as Dhiya Hussein, a former colonel under Saddam Hussein who U.S. authorities said was wanted for running an assassination cell for insurgents in the region. In the angry aftermath, 40 cars carrying hundreds of people converged on the family's funeral later in the day, said Fadhil Najm, a neighbor. He said the mourners shouted, "Death to America! Death to killers of women!" as they buried the bodies. Gen. Jamal Tahir Bakir, head of the provincial police, said U.S. forces acted on their own in the raid. The U.S. military denied that. It confirmed the deaths of the couple and their daughter's injury but said the raid was conducted in cooperation with Iraqi forces. Under a new agreement between the United States and Iraq, which went into effect Jan. 1, all operations must be coordinated with Iraqi authorities. As is often the case in Iraq, versions of the story diverged markedly. The U.S. military described Hussein as the suspected leader of an assassination cell belonging to the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which U.S. officials say is led by foreigners. When they entered the couple's bedroom, they saw his wife reach under a mattress. In Arabic, they told her to show her hands, "but she failed to comply," the military said. They killed her, and Hussein then charged the soldiers. He was killed, the military said, by "forces acting in self-defense." The girl was wounded by a shot that exited the mother's body and struck her in the leg, it said. She was treated for what the military described as a minor injury. A search then uncovered a "high-powered pistol" under the mattress. Sabir Abdullah, a cousin and neighbor of Hussein's who spoke to the family, said the soldiers arrived in eight vehicles, with air cover, and entered Hussein's house as the couple and their children slept. In the bedroom, they shot the woman, Fathiya Ali Ahmed, in her head, body, arm and leg, he said. The daughter, Ahlam, who usually slept in the bedroom with her parents, started to cry. In the firing, she was shot in the left thigh and right arm, he said. The father began shouting, "God is greatest," and in the tumult, the soldiers shot him in the head, stomach, and both arms and legs, Abdullah said. The couple's other children were unhurt. "Where are the rights of Iraqis?" asked Abdul Rahman Khalaf, a tribal leader in the town. "Who's going to bring back Dhiya and Fathiya for their children?" Abdullah said the soldiers may have been Special Forces troops, wearing beards and nontraditional uniforms. The operation began at 1:30 a.m., he said, and lasted until 4 a.m. Relatives said U.S. forces detained Hussein for 11 months in 2004. On a violent day, just a week before provincial elections, assailants detonated a booby-trapped vehicle by remote control Saturday near a police convoy in western Iraq, killing five policeman and wounding 11, police said. The blue van exploded after a weekly meeting at a police station in Garma, a town about 20 miles northwest of Baghdad that was once an insurgent stronghold, according to police Maj. Khudr al-Assawi. Two senior officers -- a lieutenant colonel and a major -- were among those killed, he said. The U.S. military said two policemen and one civilian were killed.