Soldiers Among 8 Killed as US Air Strike Hits Iraq Forces 'By Mistake'

Baghdad: Eight Iraqis were killed on Saturday, most of them security personnel, in a US air strike that apparently targeted them by mistake, a provincial official said.

"Eight people -- a senior intelligence official, five policemen and a woman -- were killed by a US strike on the centre of Al-Baghdadi," a town in western Iraq, the official said, asking not to be identified.

"It seems the strike was a mistake," the official said of the incident in the Euphrates Valley town, adjacent to the Ain al-Asad airbase 250 kilometres (160 miles) west of the capital.