10-26-07, 9:9 am

BAGHDAD, Oct. 24.— Around 16 civilians died and another 14 were injured early Tuesday morning after a U.S. helicopter attacked a town near Tikrit in northern Iraq, according to police sources quoted by ANSA.

It was the third time in less than two weeks that U.S. troops have killed civilians in an air raid. This time, an Apache attack helicopter arrived at dawn over the town of Dijal near Tikrit and opened fire.

The Iraqi government also protested an operation that was carried out this past weekend in the Sadr City neighborhood, where U.S. troops with helicopter support massacred 13 people, all of them civilians, including two babies, according to police.

Meanwhile, the EFE reported that militias under Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army were still having fierce clashes with Iraqi police in the downtown part of the city of Basora, about 500 km south of Baghdad, according to security forces.

MORE CIVILIAN VICTIMS IN AFGHANISTAN

KABUL, Oct. 23.—At least 13 Afghan civilians were killed and an identical number injured in a NATO air raid near this capital, government sources confirmed on Tuesday, according to PL.

The massacre occurred on Monday in the province of Wardak, about 40 km north of Kabul, according to a regional council chief, Haji Hazrat Janan.

In another incident, the U.S. command reported that a child was killed and four others injured during an attack by its troops against a camp of alleged Afghan rebels in the southeastern province of Zabul. More than 4,500 people, most of them civilians, have been killed since January in this Central Asian Islamic nation.

From Granma International