BAGHDAD - Seventeen Shiites were killed Sunday and five wounded in a US assault on a Shiite mosque in northeast Baghdad, a source in the Iraqi defense ministry and medics said.
Imam Ali hospital in Sadr City neighborhood confirmed the toll.
The US military said it had no information about the incident.
Images broadcast on Iraqia, the state-owned television station, showed blood spattered bodies of people from the mosque, many of whom were elderly men.
Identity cards on the corpses revealed one to be a member of the Tanzim faction of Dawa Party, part of the United Iraqi Alliance, and another to be part of a tribal council.
One witness, shown by the television, said that US soldiers, backed by Iraqi security forces, attacked the mosque while a ceremony was underway for a man killed three days earlier in an insurgent attack in southern Baghdad.
Jawad Maliki, an official of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari`s Dawa Party, told Iraqia television that he heard the US forces were chasing a wanted man who fled into the mosque.
"But this is no justification to attack and kill these people," he said. "This was a hostile attack looking to destroy the political process and provoke civil war. We put full responsibility on US troops and US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad."
Hazem al-Aaraji, of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr`s political movement originally said many of its followers were killed in the attack.
"More than 20 militants have been killed in the Mustafa mosque in the neighborhood of Ur," said al-Aaraji, referring to an area of Baghdad near Sadr City.
Sources in the Iraqi interior ministry said earlier that US soldiers while conducting a raid on the mosque came under fire from its guards and responded, killing guards as well as number of Sadr`s followers inside the mosque which police described as a stronghold for the group.
03/26/2006 19:47 GMT