Iraq attack disputed

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s state-run television claimed Wednesday that a U.S.-British airstrike killed 23 people during a soccer game. U.S. officials blamed a malfunctioning Iraqi anti-aircraft missile.

The Iraqi News Agency said allied planes attacked Tall Afar, 275 miles northwest of Baghdad, the capital. It didn’t say when, but said the victims were buried Wednesday. It said 11 other people were injured.

At the Pentagon, officials said Iraqi forces fired several surface-to-air missiles at allied planes on Tuesday, and it appeared that part of at least one of the Iraqi missiles malfunctioned and landed in the soccer field.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the planes spotted fire from anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles that didn’t come “anywhere near our airplanes.”

The allied planes didn’t fire in response, he said.

“In the event anyone was killed, it undoubtedly was the result of misdirected ground fire that ended up in a location that was not intended,” Rumsfeld said.

Iraqi state-run television showed children being treated at a hospital who were reportedly injured in the attack. It also quoted an unidentified doctor who treated people at Tall Afar Hospital saying the attack was Tuesday.

The television report quoted the doctor as saying four members of one family were killed and some of the injured were in a serious condition.

An injured child, Amar Hameed, 5, said on television that he was watching the soccer game when a missile fell on the field. He reportedly had burns and fractures.

Allied aircraft patrol the skies over southern and northern Iraq, zones established after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Shiite Muslim rebels in the south and Kurds in the north from Saddam Hussein’s forces.

Iraq doesn’t recognize the no-fly zones and has challenged allied aircraft since December 1998.

In Washington, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said of the Iraqi charges: “There’s no substance, nothing at all to those claims.”