US queries account of killings

BAGHDAD -- US soldiers may not have been responsible for killing two Arab television journalists at a Baghdad checkpoint, the US military said yesterday, but added it would investigate the incident further.

Dubai-based news channel Al Arabiya says two of its journalists, traveling in a small all-terrain vehicle, were shot by US troops near a military checkpoint on Thursday night after another vehicle drove through the road block.

But a US military spokesman said as far as the US Army could ascertain, its troops were responsible only for shooting and killing the driver of the vehicle that went through the checkpoint.

"There are discrepancies between what has been reported . . . and the facts on the ground," Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the US military in Iraq, said at a news conference.

Kimmitt said the army had counted the rounds fired by US troops at the car that was driven through the checkpoint and had failed to account for only two bullets. He said autopsies had shown that at least five bullets struck the Arabiya journalists.

"There is a significant discrepancy between those rounds fired at the car that ran the checkpoint and the rounds that are alleged to have been fired at the Arabiya journalists."

He said the Arabiya employees had been hit with surprising accuracy if they had been in a moving vehicle under fire at night from US troops fearing an attack on their post.

Kimmitt acknowledged that Iraqi police and paramilitaries had also been manning the checkpoint, but could not say whether they had fired their weapons.