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BAGHDAD - Iraqi villagers yesterday buried victims of a United States airstrike that Sunni leaders called a massacre while a key poll showed strong American support for a change of tactics in Iraq.
The US military said they were targeting al Qaeda members in Saturday's attack but villagers said most of the victims were women and children.
Car bombs exploded in cities north and south of the capital Baghdad, killing 10 people and wounding scores, as President George W. Bush called on Republicans and Democrats to work together on a new strategy for Iraq.
Underlining the chaos, a nephew of Saddam Hussein, Ayman al-Sabawi, escaped from a prison northwest of the city of Mosul yesterday.
Sabawi, accused of financing the Sunni insurgency against US forces and the Shiite-led Government, was said to have escaped with the help of a guard.
In his weekly radio address, Bush said the two US parties should "come together and find greater consensus on the best way forward".
His call followed the release of recommendations by a bipartisan panel that described the situation in Iraq as "grave and deteriorating" and urged a regional diplomatic effort and more American training for Iraqi Army units.
The Iraq Study Group suggests American combat troops be withdrawn from Iraq by early 2008 and that the US hold direct talks with Iran and Syria.
A Newsweek poll released yesterday showed 39 per cent of Americans agreed with the findings, 20 per cent disagreed, while 26 per cent said they were not aware of the group.
Newsweek also said 68 per cent of those polled believe the US was losing ground in Iraq.
Bush has reacted coolly to the withdrawal proposal as well as one urging the US to hold direct talks with Iran and Syria, which he accuses of fuelling the violence with their respective support for Shiite militants and Sunni insurgents. The US military said the airstrike on Saturday on the predominantly Sunni village of Jalameda, near Ishaqi, 90km north of Baghdad, targeted al Qaeda militants. It said 18 men and two women were killed.
But local officials said the 17 victims included six women and five children. Relatives showed the children's bodies to journalists.
In March, Ishaqi police accused US troops of tying up and shooting six adults and five children and then calling in an airstrike to destroy the house. An investigation by the US unit involved concluded no wrongdoing took place.
Hundreds of chanting residents of Jalameda marched through Ishaqi yesterday, firing shots and carrying banners that read: "The people of Ishaqi condemn the mass killing by the occupation forces."
"We ask the Americans to be merciful. They kill civilians alleging they are terrorists. Ishaqi is a catastrophe," said Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the biggest Sunni political bloc in Parliament.
In fresh violence, a suicide car bomber killed seven people and wounded 44 in a crowded market in the holy Shiite city of Kerbala yesterday.
About the same time, three people were killed and three wounded in a car bomb explosion in the ethnically mixed northern city of Mosul.
The country has been racked by bloodletting between majority Shiites and once-dominant Sunnis since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in February.
Iraq's national security adviser accused Iran and Syria of deliberately failing to secure their borders with Iraq, saying most suicide bombers entered from Syria.
"Ninety per cent of the suicide bombers actually land at Damascus airport and cross the border into Iraq," Mowaffak al-Rubaie said at a security forum in Bahrain.
The US military also reported the deaths of two marines in Anbar province, the heartland of the Sunni insurgency.
- REUTERS
