U.S. and Iraqi Accounts Vary Concerning Airstrike That Kills at Least 20

2nd Highest-Ranking US Military Commander In Iraq: "We Have Done Everything Militarily We Possibly Can"...

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: December 9, 2006

BAGHDAD, Dec. 8 — The only thing that was clear from the accounts of Friday’s airstrike by American forces north of Baghdad was that at least 20 Iraqis had been killed.

But typical of the fog of war here, American and Iraqi officials disagreed on just about every other point.

The United States military said that 20 people had been killed, including 2 women, and that they were all insurgents tied to Al Qaeda. Iraqi officials gave death tolls that ranged from 22 to 32, and said that the deceased were two extended families that included as many as 10 children.
As the situation in Iraq deteriorates, counting deaths and the numbers of attacks here has become a difficult — and politically charged — business. The Iraqi government temporarily banned the release of casualty figures this fall, and the Iraq Study Group, which issued a report on the war this week in Washington, criticized the American military for what it said was a chronic undercounting of attacks.

But an average day of violence shows just how difficult counting can be here, particularly in rural areas that are hard to reach like the site of Friday’s strike, which occurred in Salahuddin, a predominantly Sunni province north of Baghdad. >>>>cont

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