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US shooting spree kills four more

STAR DESK
At least four people were killed and several others wounded yesterday by gunshots near the government buildings in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the second such incident in as many days, a hospital official and witnesses said.
US troops fired on a crowd from the rooftops of the buildings, several witnesses told AFP. One of the wounded, an Iraqi policeman, said police at a station a few hundred metres from the government buildings had opened fire to disperse looters trying to rob a bank.
Meanwhile, the death toll in
Tuesday's shootings near the same buildings rose to 15 with 28 wounded, according to hospital sources.
US forces admitted partial responsibility for Tuesday's incidents, when witnesses also said American troops fired on a crowd, admitting yesterday that they had killed "around seven" of the victims.
"Fire was indeed delivered from coalition forces, it was lethal fire and some Iraqis were killed as a result, we think the number is in the order of seven and we think there were some wounded as well," said Brigadier General Vincent Brooks at US Central Command's war base in Qatar.
Yesterday, an AFP journalist saw two bodies arrive at the city's Al-Zahrawi hospital, where a doctor said eight people were also wounded. "Four bodies have just been brought in," Dr Riyadh Hamdi said.
Witnesses told AFP that US troops stationed on top of the government buildings had opened fire, but a US army spokesman would only confirm that an incident had taken place.
An Iraqi police officer, who had only just resumed duties after the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime last week, said his men had intervened in a bank raid when the Americans started shooting.
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Meanwhile, a US marine was shot dead after being mistaken for the enemy, the US Central Command said in a statement yesterday. The location of the shooting was not revealed.
Three US soldiers died and as many were injured in accidents around Baghdad on Monday.
The Pentagon raised the death toll among US troops fighting in Iraq to 123 on Tuesday and said 495 have been wounded in action in the monthlong war.
The number of wounded American troops jumped to 495 from 400 listed on Monday, as the Defence Department tabulated delayed reports from recent fighting, said officials.
US special forces yesterday raided the Baghdad home of a microbiologist nicknamed "Dr Germ" who ran Iraq's secret biological laboratory. The marines said one of their units found an abandoned terrorist training camp where recruits had been taught how to make bombs.
The special force raid, backed by about 40 marines with machineguns, was carried out at the home of Rihab
Taha, in charge of a laboratory that weaponised anthrax. Troops brought out boxes of documents and three men with their hands up.
Taha is the wife of Gen. Amer Mohammed Rashid, Iraq's former oil minister. Her whereabouts was not immediately known.
In western Iraq, a US Army cavalry unit accepted the surrender of the 12th Iraqi Brigade, seizing 40 tanks and close to 1,000 weapons, said Marine Maj. Stewart Upton, a US Central Command spokesman. He said the number of prisoners taken had not yet been calculated.
The US military is conducting far-flung searches of suspected illegal weapons sites, but so far has not confirmed finding any of the weapons of mass destruction the Bush administration says Iraq was hiding.
Agreement
Iraqi delegates agreed on a few basic principles -- Iraq must be democratic, Saddam Hussein's Baath party must be dissolved, and the new government must be open to all national political groups. They also agreed to meet again in 10 days.
The 80 or so participants at Tuesday's
US-sponsored meeting to begin shaping Iraq's postwar government adopted a set of 13 points declaring that "the rule of law must be paramount." They were also assured by a White House envoy that the United States has "absolutely no interest" in ruling Iraq.
Lookout on suspects
With the pressure on to run to ground more of Iraq's toppled Baathist leadership, US marines patrolling the streets of Baghdad said they were looking out for informants among the population who might point out suspects' houses.
US officials continued to accuse Syria of hiding top-ranking Iraqis, among them former spy chief Farouk Hijazi.
Hijazi was director of external operations for the Iraqi intelligence service in the mid-1990s, when it allegedly launched a failed attempt to assassinate the first President George Bush during a visit to Kuwait, a US official said.
Syria has angrily denied US charges of giving sanctuary to fleeing Iraqi officials and of possessing chemical weapons.