MOSUL, Iraq — At least 10 people were killed and scores wounded in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul when US troops fired on a crowd angered by a speech by the new US-backed governor, witnesses reported.
The charges were denied by a US military spokesman in the city Tuesday, who said troops had first come under fire from at least two gunmen and fired back, without aiming at the crowd.
But the incident overshadowed the start of US-brokered talks aimed at sketching out the country's future leadership in the southern city of Nasiriyah, a Shiite Muslim bastion where 20,000 people marched through the city chanting "No to America, No to Saddam."
The firefight in Mosul broke out as the newly-appointed governor of the city was making a speech from the building housing his offices which listeners deemed was too pro-US, witnesses said.
"There were protesters outside, 100 to 150, there was fire, we returned fire," a US military spokesman said, adding the initial shots came from a roof opposite the building, about 75 metres away.
"We didn't fire at the crowd, but at the top of the building," the spokesman added. "There were at least two gunmen, I don't know if they were killed."
"The firing was not intensive but sporadic, and lasted up to two minutes," the spokesman said.
But witnesses charged that US troops fired into the crowd after it became increasingly hostile towards the new governor, Mashaan al-Juburi.
"[The soldiers] climbed on top of the building and first fired at a building near the crowd, with the glass falling on the civilians. People started to throw stones, then the Americans fired at them," said Ayad Hassun, 37.
"Dozens of people fell," he said, his own shirt stained with blood.
"The people moved toward the government building, the children threw stones, the Americans started firing," another witness, Marwan Mohammed, 50, told AFP.
According to a third witness, Abdulrahman Ali, 49, the US soldiers opened fire when they saw the crowd running at the government building.
An AFP journalist saw a wrecked car in the square and ambulances ferrying wounded people to hospital, while a US aircraft flew over the northern city at low altitude.
A doctor at the city hospital, Ayad al-Ramadhani said: "There are perhaps 100 wounded and 10 to 12 dead."
The process of finding a new Iraqi leadership after the fall of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein got underway in Nasiriyah, the first meeting of opposition groups since the launch of the war on March 20, with US officials expected to discuss the process of forming an interim administration.
But the man tipped to become Iraq's next leader, Ahmad Chalabi, head of the US-backed Iraqi National Congress, was not due to attend.
Iraq's leading Shiite Muslim opposition group was also boycotting the talks, amid distrust over the US role and division over who should lead Iraq.
Chalabi, who has insisted he is not a candidate for a post in the interim administration to be run by retired US general Jay Garner, planned to send a representative.
Dozens of representatives from Iraq's fractious mix of ethnic, tribal and opposition groups, including those formerly in exile, were said to be invited although no official list was given.
The New York Times quoted Garner as saying his mission to rebuild Iraq's political structures would be messy and contentious.
His fears appeared justified as the talks in the Shiite bastion sparked a demonstration estimated by journalists to number around 20,000 people, led by religious figures.
"Yes to freedom ... Yes to Islam ... No to America, No to Saddam," the crowd chanted as they marched through the centre of Nasiriyah.
US forces tried for the first time Tuesday to prevent the media from covering a third day of anti-US protests outside the hotel housing a US operations base in central Baghdad.
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