A dozen killed in friendly fire attack on US troops

9.40pm

A BBC reporter watched in horror as a US warplane dropped a bomb beside the convoy of coalition troops he was travelling with in Northern Iraq, killing a dozen soliders.

BBC's World Affairs Editor John Simpson suffered minor injuries in the friendly fire attack, and described the aftermath as a "scene from hell".

Reporting to the BBC by telephone minutes afterwards he said he had counted "10 to 12 bodies... Americans dead."

"It was an American plane, dropped the bomb right beside us, I saw it land about four metres away.

Simpson said the vehicles around him were all on fire and many dead.

"There are bodies burning, there are bodies lying around, there are bits of bodies on the ground. We don't know how many Americans are dead, there's ammunition exploding from some of these cars."

He apologised for his hurried report: "I'm sorry if I sound excitable, but I'm bleeding from the ear."

The coalition convoy Simpson was travelling with contained between eight and 10 cars, two of which contained US special forces.

Kurdish forces, backed by the US, are advancing south from their self-ruled enclave in northern Iraq on the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, held by Saddam Huseein's forces.

Simpson also said a senior Kurdish political figure was believed to be among the wounded, possibly killed.

"They hit their own people, they may have hit this senior Kurdish figure, very senior Kurdish figure, the brother of the top man and they have killed a lot of ordinary characters," Simpson said.

He did not identify the precise location in northern Iraq. Iraqi Kurdish militia fighters said they captured the northern Iraqi town of Ain Sifni today after a battle with Iraqi forces.