Iraqi forces killed mistakenly during American airstrikes

U.S. spokesman says air support comes only at Iraqi request.

BAGHDAD — At least six Iraqi police and allied militiamen were killed in American airstrikes early Saturday during a raid for a wanted Islamic State militant after they were apparently mistaken by Iraq’s military for armed insurgents.

The apparent friendly-fire incident is being investigated by Iraqi and American officials in Baghdad but it has provoked some anger among critics of the United States who have long been suspicious or hostile to the U.S. military’s involvement in the fight against the Islamic State.

Iraq’s joint operations command, the umbrella for Iraq’s military, police and militia forces, said that before dawn a team of Iraqi troops was executing a search in the Anbar province town of al-Baghdadi for a man with links to Islamic State.

The team was backed by U.S. airpower, the command said.

Once the militant was arrested, the Iraqi forces encountered an armed group they did not recognize and American helicopters swooped in and opened fire, according to the command statement.

The command said it was launching an investigation into the incident.

A spokesman for the U.S.led anti-Islamic State coalition did not respond to a request for comment, but said in a Twitter post that the episode is being investigated.

The Twitter post also said United States air support only comes at the request of or by approval of the Iraqi military.

“NO unilateral coalition operations in Iraq,” the spokesman, Col. Ryan Dillon, said in the tweet.

Khalid al-Obaidi, a local tribal leader in al-Baghdadi, said in a telephone interview the airstrike had also injured 20 people including the heads of al-Baghdadi’s police and local council.

Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, long a critic of American military presence in Iraq, said in a statement the “American occupation proves its tyranny, its arrogance and its blatant aggression against the Iraqi government, its independence and its sovereignty, by indiscriminately and unjustly bombarding Baghdadi district which claimed innocent lives.”

Sadr, who also recently positioned himself as a nationalist who opposes Iranian meddling in Iraq, demanded the “aggressors” be punished.

Separately on Friday, the U.S.-led coalition said a total of 831 civilians have been killed in coalition airstrikes by the end of 2017 during the three-year war against Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria.

Airwars, an independent monitoring group, has said that number is implausible given the intensity of the war, particularly in Islamic State’s self-declared capitals of Mosul and Raqqa and that their research has shown that up to 9,210 non-combatants were killed by the end of last year.