U.S. soldiers opened fire on a festive wedding parade in Samarra, a town north of Baghdad, earlier this week. Medical officials and survivors told Knight Ridder newspapers three teenagers were killed and seven others injured. The troops fired upon the party after celebrants fired their guns in the air. But 17-year-old Abdul Salam Jassim said U.S. soldiers didn’t open fire until several minutes after the celebratory shooting had occurred. Jassim’s colon has been destroyed by the shooting. Twelve-year-old Mohammad Ahmed has gunshot wounds to his abdomen, thighs and scrotum. Right after the shooting, armed U.S. soldiers walked into the hospital asking for the names of the wounded. Many of the people in the hospital were so terrified, they fled. Meanwhile, in the same town of Samarra, the U.S. military has admitted U.S. troops killed two Iraqi civilians and injured two others after their vehicle failed to stop at a checkpoint.

Tensions are also escalating in the industrial Iraqi town of Hit, some 90 miles northwest of Baghdad. The New York Times reports a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a U.S. convoy on Tuesday. U.S. troops responded conducting house-to-house searches. Residents say the soldiers kicked down doors while an assault helicopter circled above. According to The New York Times, residents are furious that U.S. soldiers had burst in on Muslim women in their homes. The next day, as soldiers talked with local authorities in the police station, a crowd gathered and pelted the station with stones. Then someone threw a hand grenade over the wall. Two soldiers were injured. The soldiers formed a cordon with their guns aimed outward as they evacuated their wounded and warning shots rang out. One local man said he had been shot in the leg. When the troops retreated, the crowd rioted for hours, burning the municipal building and the police station in protest of what was viewed as the collaboration of the police. The U.S. military says six U.S. soldiers have been killed this week under hostile fire.

And UPI is reporting a group calling itself the Unification Front for the Liberation of Iraq announced its existence yesterday with a statement published in the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir. The group said its principal mission is to liberate the Iraqi territories from foreign occupation, and it called on Iraqi national political forces for immediate resistance action to prevent cooperation with U.S. forces.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has admitted the Bush administration chose to focus on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction as the primary justification to invade because it was politically convenient. The extraordinary admission comes in an interview Wolfowitz gave to the magazine Vanity Fair. It’s published in the July issue. Wolfowitz also says there was another justification that was “almost unnoticed but huge,” that the U.S. could withdraw its forces from Saudi Arabia once the threat of Saddam Hussein was removed. Wolfowitz told the magazine, “For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.” This comes just days after Wolfowitz’s boss, Donald Rumsfeld, admitted for the first time that the arms may never be found.

A Russian newspaper is reporting Washington has drawn up a plan for military action against Iran. Citing diplomats, the paper reports the action would be launched mainly from Iraq, but military bases in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan would also be used. It says the Bush administration has struck a deal with the Azerbaijani president for U.S. troops to be deployed there. Georgian and Azerbaijani diplomats are denying the report.

This as ABC News is reporting the Pentagon is advocating a massive covert action program to overthrow Iran’s ruling ayatollahs. The program would include covert sponsorship of a group currently deemed terrorists by the U.S. government. The proposal is not new and has so far not won over enough top Bush administration officials. But ABC News reports the proposal is getting a new look as the administration ramps up its rhetoric against Iran.

Meanwhile, Britain’s Financial Times reports on its front page today that Donald Rumsfeld is spearheading efforts to make regime change in Iran the official policy goal of the Bush administration. However, his campaign is meeting with considerable resistance with other senior figures.

And the Agence France-Presse is reporting the Bush administration has slapped punitive sanctions on an Iranian company, two Moldovan firms and one Moldovan businessman. State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said the sanctions were imposed because the firms contributed to missile programs in Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas last night. It was their second meeting on the U.S.-backed so-called Roadmap to Peace in two weeks. Sharon said he’ll order Israeli forces to pull out of the center of the West Bank cities. Israel Radio reported today Sharon also intends to give permanent permits for Palestinian officials to travel between the Gaza Strip and West Bank, increase the amount of tax money transferred to the Palestinian Authority, allow some Palestinian laborers back into Israel, and ease restrictions on humanitarian organizations working in the territories. But Sharon’s spokesperson said the redeployment of troops is dependent on the Palestinians’ fight against militant groups. Sharon demanded the groups be dismantled. He also would not agree to a statement recognizing the Palestinians’ right to a state. Palestinian sources told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that, for his part, Abbas demanded that Sharon transfer to the Palestinians security control over all of Gaza, as well as over Ramallah in the West Bank. Abbas also asked for Israeli help to rebuild the Palestinian Security Forces.

The 21-year-old British peace activist Tom Hurndall yesterday returned to London from Israel. He’s in a coma after an Israeli soldier shot him in the head. His parents don’t think he will ever regain consciousness. His parents returned with Tom after spending six weeks in Israel and the Occupied Territories investigating their son’s shooting. The couple says their investigations were hampered at every turn and called the Israeli army’s report on the shooting of their son a fabrication.