Many Iraqi civilians are feared dead following a US bombing of the town of Hilla. Witnesses have given conflicting accounts of between eleven to sixty casualties and scores more wounded. The Pentagon says US helicopters were providing air support to Iraqi troops fighting Shia forces as part of the nationwide crackdown on Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. The attack follows another US strike that killed at least five civilians in the town of Tikrit. A relative of the victims said his family members had been burnt beyond recognition.

Relative: “Those are five members from my family whom I should recognize. It was so hard for me to recognize them, as the bodies were charred. This is the American democracy. This is the human rights that Bush has called
for.”

At least three homes were hit in the US attack. Meanwhile, in Baghdad, residents are accusing US forces of setting fire to a popular market in the sprawling Shia neighborhood of Sadr City. On Wednesday, hundreds of demonstrators took the streets to protest the blaze and the ongoing US-Iraqi fighting with the Mahdi Army. Elsewhere in Baghdad, at least one civilian was killed and another five wounded when a mortar round hit a residential area.

Resident: “What did we do? Where shall we go? We are staying as we are displaced family in this place. We do not know where we shall go now. If we go to the place that we were living in before, we will be killed, and here we have been attacked by mortar shells. Where shall we go? We have children and families. This is unacceptable.”