An Iraqi policeman was killed and another wounded in a shootout at a bank in the main northern city of Mosul on Saturday in which two gunmen were also killed, a senior officer said.
The police had been drawing their salaries from a branch of the Al-Rashid Bank in the southern Al-Ghizlani district of the city when they came under fire, Police Colonel Mutaz Mohamad said.
"Three assailants attacked four policemen as they were drawing their salaries, then there was a shootout that also involved a police patrol that happened to pass by," he said.
"One policeman was killed and two wounded. Two assailants were killed and a third wounded, but he managed to escape," said Mohamad.
US forces fired on a civilian car in Tikrit, killing a three-year old boy and wounding six women and children as well as their male driver, Iraqi police and relatives said.
Police said US soldiers based in Saddam Hussein's hometown, 175 km north of Baghdad, shot at the family's red car in the town on Friday night.
"There was a family; four children, three women and their driver," an Iraqi police major said. "The US forces fired on them and all of them were injured. One child was killed."
A Reuters reporter at Tikrit hospital saw a US officer visiting the wounded in hospital on Friday night.
A US military spokesman in Tikrit said on Saturday he had no information about a child being killed. Major Neal O'Brien said he knew of one incident in which four Iraqis were injured after their car ran a checkpoint.
"At about 7:15 last night a patrol engaged a civilian vehicle that refused to stop at a checkpoint," he said. "Four Iraqi civilians were injured and evacuated by Iraqi ambulance."
He said that there were two cars involved in the incident.
Reuters Television footage showed a red car full of bullet holes. The seats were covered with shattered glass and stained with blood.
Iraqi police heard the gunfire and came out to the scene with an ambulance. Doctors said the three-year-old died in hospital from severe wounds to his stomach.
"The Americans are criminals," his mother May Qahtan said from her hospital bed on Saturday. "Saddam is the only terrorist? The Americans are the ones killing all these people, all these children. Isn't that terrorism?"
Seven Iraqi bodyguards, heading to work for US experts, were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in central Baghdad during the morning rush hour on Saturday, said hospital sources.
"We have admitted seven wounded Iraqis, including two who have already left the hospital after having been given first aid," a nurse at the al-Jarrah private clinic told AFP.
"The five others, including two who underwent surgery, are still in hospital," she said.
Police said earlier that three westerners had been wounded in the blast, which occurred on Abu Nawas street on the eastern banks of the Tigris river, facing the US-led coalition headquarters.
Leith Ibrahim Shihab, who was wounded in the head and shoulder, said he was employed by the Iraqi security company, Somar, which is hired to escort and guard foreign experts dealing with the electricity and trade ministries.
"We had left the al-Sadeer hotel and were heading toward the presidential palace (the coalition headquarters) to escort American experts, when an explosion occurred and we were targeted by gunfire," said Shihab.
Police Captain Mohammad al-Kilani said the attack occurred around 7:30am. The explosion gutted a Japanese-made civilian car, he added.
"The car was followed by another vehicle which evacuated the wounded," he said, adding that "the explosives had been placed on the edge of the sidewalk by unknown individuals."
A US soldier on the scene declined to give any casualty toll but confirmed that the car had been hit by a bomb.
"It was a roadside bomb which hit a vehicle," the soldier said, asking not to be identified.
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