Iraqis helping remove the dead bodies

TIKRIT, Iraq, August 8 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Five Iraqi men and one child were killed early Friday, August 8, by U.S. gunfire in a street market in the town of Tikrit, according to the director of the main hospital in the town, north of Baghdad.

U.S. soldiers opened fire at five arms sellers who were test firing Kalashnikov assault rifles for customers at 8:30 am (0430 GMT), killing them, Salah al-Dulaimi told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

A child who was in the marketplace of the town, 175 kilometers (110 miles) north of Baghdad, was also fatally shot, and a woman was wounded, he said.

There was no immediate confirmation of the incident from the U.S. military.   

Three U.S. Soldiers Wounded

One of the Iraqi victims

In another development, at least three U.S. occupation soldiers were wounded Friday when a roadside blast hit two U.S. all-terrain Humvees by al-Amariya, 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad, witnesses told AFP.

A powerful explosion shook the road at 10:00 am (0600 GMT), flipping over one of the vehicles, said farmer Sami Abed al-Issawi.

U.S. troops immediately arrived at the scene, while a helicopter evacuated three wounded soldiers, he said.

Al-Amariya is just south of Fallujah, considered a center of festering anti-U.S. sentiment among the area's Sunni Muslim community.

Jordan Embassy Blast Ups

Also in the occupied Arab country, two more people died from wounds suffered during Thursday's powerful car bomb blast outside Jordan's embassy in Baghdad, a medical source said, bringing the number of dead in the attack to 13.

"Two more people died during the night," said Kutayba Salman, the head doctor of Iskan hospital, Friday.

Eleven people were killed and 57 wounded Thursday when a car bomb exploded outside the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, a doctor said.

The reasons for the attack were not immediately clear, though Jordan recently gave asylum to two daughters of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who is still at large despite the best efforts of occupying U.S. forces to track him down.

Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. soldier on the ground in Iraq, said the bomb was the most serious attack against a "soft target" since the end of the war on May 1.

U.S. Focuses On Ansar al-Islam

Jordan Embassy blast toll keeps rising

Meanwhile, the U.S. military, investigating Thursday's car bombing outside the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, is focusing attention on Ansar al-Islam, a group accused by Washington of being “terrorist” with links to al-Qaeda, Pentagon officials said.

"The one organization that we have confidence, that we know is in Iraq and in the Baghdad area is Ansar al Islam," said Lieutenant General Norton Schwartz, operations director of the Joint Staff.

"It is unknown whether this particular organization was associated with the events of this morning. Perhaps that will become clearer as we go down the road. But that is an Al-Qaeda related organization, and one we are focusing attention on," he said.

Schwartz said it was not yet known whether the bombing was the work of foreign “terrorists” or the former Baathist security and paramilitary forces.

Officials did not say whether it marked a change in tactics in the guerrilla war against the U.S.-led occupation troops.

"There are terrorists in Iraq. We know that and we've talked about the kind of activities that we see," said Lawrence Di Rita, a senior aide to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon's acting press secretary.

"Terrorists use a variety of tactics, including this kind of tactic," he said.

Schwartz said he did not know whether Ansar al-Islam had state sponsorship, or how large it was.

In April, U.S.-led forces conducted a devastating air and ground assault to wipe out an Ansar al-Islam-controlled enclave in northern Iraq. At the time, the group was believed to number some 800 in a cluster of 16 villages.

In recent weeks, senior U.S. military officials claimed the group is active again in Iraq along with al-Qaeda.