Global Policy Forum

By Kirk Semple

American soldiers were accused Friday of opening fire on a car carrying a family in the Baghdad district of Sadr City, killing a man and his two young daughters and wounding his son. The allegations were made by the man's wife, who was in the car, and members of the Iraqi police, who were at the scene. The American military command said in a statement on Friday that it was investigating an episode in Sadr City involving "an escalation of force," but it could not confirm any details of the account given by the man's wife.

The woman, Ikhlas Thulsiqar, said her family had turned from an alleyway onto a main street guarded by American soldiers. Seconds later, she said, a fusillade of bullets ripped into the car. "They killed the father of my children! The Americans killed my daughters!" she sobbed, sitting crumpled on the floor of Imam Ali Hospital in Sadr City where rescuers had taken the victims, including her daughters, 9 and 11, and her son, 7. "That is a serious allegation, and we'll take a look and figure out what happened," Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said late Friday.

The deadly shooting appeared to be the first in the working-class district involving either the Iraqi or American military since a joint force of more than 1,100 American and Iraqi troops began a house-to-house search for weapons and militants there last Sunday. The episode had the potential to inflame anti-American sentiment in the neighborhood and reawaken the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that has largely controlled the district but has agreed to stand down to allow the sweep to take place.

The military operation in Sadr City, part of an effort to pacify the capital by flooding the streets with security forces, has served as a test of a new, fragile relationship between the authorities and Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who controls the Mahdi Army and commands a vast following among poor Shiites. The military incursion followed protracted negotiations between representatives of Mr. Sadr, neighborhood leaders and government officials. Mr. Sadr vowed not to impede the crackdown in Sadr City or elsewhere, and privately ordered his fighters not to resist the military sweeps regardless of the level of provocation. But Mr. Sadr, a fierce nationalist who has long demanded a rapid American withdrawal from Iraq, has also complained publicly about the American involvement in the Sadr City operation.

Local leaders, in turn, have also warned that a heavy-handed or prolonged American engagement in Sadr City might incite the residents and their militia to retaliate. But in the past few days, residents say, American forces have moved with great care through the neighborhood and have mostly remained on the street while their Iraqi counterparts have conducted the house-to-house searches.

Also Friday, the purported leader of an insurgent umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq, was captured in a raid on the western outskirts of Baghdad, according to Iraqi state television and The Associated Press, which quoted a top Iraqi military spokesman. The spokesman, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, told The A.P. that the man, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, was caught in a raid in the Abu Ghraib district and was identified by another detainee. American officials had no confirmation of the capture. Last Sunday, Iraqi officials announced that they may have captured Mr. Baghdadi in Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, but the suspect turned out to be someone else. The Islamic State of Iraq has claimed responsibility for numerous major attacks in Iraq, including the kidnapping last week of 18 people, most of them police officers, who were subsequently killed.

In Diyala, American forces on Friday shot and killed three Iraqi Army soldiers in a military pickup truck after they failed to obey an American order to stop, Iraqi military officials said. The spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Muhammad al-Askary, said the military was investigating the episode, which took place north of Baquba, though it appeared to be "a mistake." He said the soldiers were wearing uniforms and were in a vehicle with military markings. According to Colonel Garver, the American military was also investigating the matter. "We understand there were three Iraqi Army soldiers killed in this engagement, and it is too early to tell the details surrounding the event," he said. American and Iraqi forces are fighting a growing Sunni insurgent threat in Diyala, which has become one of the bloodiest sectarian battlegrounds in Iraq. On Friday, the American commander for northern Iraq, Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon, said he had asked for more troops in the province.

General Mixon told reporters at the Pentagon in a videolink from Iraq that he had already shifted troops to Diyala from elsewhere in northern Iraq and requested reinforcements from the central command in Baghdad. He did not reveal how many additional troops he had requested, but he told reporters to "keep an eye on what goes on in Diyala over the next couple of weeks." On Thursday, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, said Diyala would "very likely" get more troops.

In Hibhib, a town in Diyala with an entrenched insurgency, gunmen from the Islamic State of Iraq laid siege to a police station on Friday, killing one policeman and forcing others to flee. They then looted it of weapons and equipment, burned several police cars and blew up the building before escaping, police officials said. Four people in Baghdad, each in a different neighborhood, were killed by sniper fire on Friday, according to an official at the Interior Ministry. The official also said at least 10 bodies were found dumped around the capital. The American military reported that a marine was killed Friday during a combat operation in Anbar Province. On Friday, the satellite channel Al Jazeera reported that Raouf Abdel-Rahman, the Iraqi judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death, had asked for asylum in Britain. The British Home Office would not confirm the report, saying it does not discuss individual cases.