Baghdad - Contradictory accounts were given Friday about a dawn US raid on an Iraqi village near Baquba. While the US military said the raids had targeted people involved in criminal activity, media reports said numerous civilians had been killed or wounded.
Both Iraqiya State TV and independent Sharkiya TV reported that at least 25 civilians were killed and 40 others injured when US planes attacked the village of Gezani al-Imam north-west of Baquba.
A further media outlet, al-Forat TV, which is the voice of the Shiite Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, reported that more than 30 civilians were killed and 50 wounded in the operation.
The number of casualties was most likely to increase as many bodies had yet to be recovered from the houses destroyed during the attack, a police source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the independent Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.
Women and children were among the victims, the source added.
At dawn, US helicopters fired a number of missiles at houses in the village, local residents said.
But according to a statement by the US military, coalition forces had targeted a Shiite special groups commander believed to be associated with members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Quds Force.
Intelligence had indicated the commander was involved in criminal activity and in helping the movement of weapons from Iran to the Iraqi capital, the statement added.
Coalition forces had come under heavy fire from armed men when they entered the targeted area and returned fire, the US military said. Coalition forces then called in air support in the gunbattle.
The pan-Arab al-Arabiya news broadcaster said earlier that the armed men were not likely to be terrorists and that they had been carrying weapons to protect themselves from militants in the city.
Diyala has become one of Iraq's most dangerous regions in recent months, with members of the al-Qaeda terror network streaming in from other areas of the country.
Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, is 60 kilometres north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
Meanwhile, eight al-Qaeda terrorist network militants were killed and 28 others detained in an Iraqi security raid south-east of Samarra city in Salahaddin province, a police source said Friday.
Among the killed were the Saudi Abu Obada, who headed al-Qaeda in the north Tigris area, and Ali Youssif al-Jabouri, the mufti of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq, an al-Qaeda affiliate, said Major Ahmed Sobhi of the Salahaddin police command anti-terrorism unit.
Al-Jabouri was responsible for a fatwa (a religious judgement) that stipulated the killing of at least 100 residents of Duluiyah for resisting al-Qaeda militants.
Three security personnel were killed and nine wounded in the clashes erupting between the forces and the militants.
The security forces, meanwhile, confiscated large amounts of weapons, rockets, explosive belts and vehicles. They also freed a number of hostages.
In another development, the US military reported that a US soldier Thursday was killed south of Baghdad.
In other news, VOI reported that two Shiite clerics had been found murdered in their homes over the past two days in the Shiite- dominated city of Basra.
One of the victims taught at a religious school and the other at an Islamic university, the report said.
The latest events follow the September murders in Basra of several representatives of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiites.
There has been speculation that the murders were not carried out by Sunnis, but rather by rival Shiite groups, possibly supported by Iran.
