Marines shoot seven dead as Mosul spirals out of control

US MARINES in the chaotic northern Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday admitted shooting dead seven Iraqis and wounding several others during a violent demonstration.

As military spokesmen confirmed details of Tuesday’s firefight, there were reports of four more deaths and several wounded yesterday, in another incident involving US forces.

Media reports from the city described US soldiers caught in an increasingly anarchic situation. Locals said that in the confusion after Iraqi police opened fire to stop a bank robbery, US troops fired back in their direction. The bank robbers were killed but two children were wounded, their injuries blamed on US gunfire.

Tuesday’s shootings came after a demonstration outside a US-occupied building in central Mosul saw trigger-happy protesters firing in the air.

Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told reporters at Central Command in Qatar that marines and special operations forces at first fired warning shots, then came under direct attack.

"Fire was directed at the marines and special operations forces in this complex. It was aimed fire, and aimed fire was returned against some of the demonstrators . It was lethal fire," he said.

Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, with Arab and Kurd communities, has been plagued by looting and violence since the Iraqi army gave it up without a fight last week.

A prominent Kurdish-backed leader, in an interview with the al-Jazeera Arabic network, claimed that at the sight of the US flag flying over the Mosul governor’s building, people "seethed and started stoning the US forces".

The violence in Mosul threatened to overshadow other developments in the largely successful US occupation of Iraq.

In Baghdad, US troops stopped robbers escaping from a bank with a haul of several million dollars.

The US war commander, Tommy Franks, was reported to have made his first visit to Baghdad while Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, become the first major exile politician to reach the capital.

About 120 Iraqi exile fighters from Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, trained by US special forces and armed with AK-47s, drove into Baghdad to a low-key welcome.

In southern Iraq, traffic policemen reappeared on the streets of An Nasiriyah, the scene of heavy fighting in the war, in a move by US forces to return life closer to normal.

About 80 unarmed traffic policemen went back to work, manning police cars and key traffic intersections, said marine Lieutenant Colonel Erik Grabowsky.

The city of Basra, meanwhile, controlled by British troops, saw the first meeting of its new city council. There were complaints that half of the dozen councilmen were formerly high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

One of them, Ghalib Cubba, a multi-millionaire business man, was said to be known in Basra as the "Saddam’s banker," infamous for holding evening soirees in the pursuit of contracts from top figures in Saddam’s regime.

As the search for Iraqi weaponry continued, British troops said they had discovered an estimated 50,000 tonnes of weapons.

Bomb disposal experts were looking through a massive cache of shells, rockets and other explosives at Amara in central Iraq.

British military sources said: "Our aim is to destroy all this stuff - we don’t want kids picking it up."