At least four schoolchildren were killed by US fire in Baghdad on Sunday, shortly after a roadside bomb ripped through a U.S. military vehicle, world news agencies said.
Eywitnesses told Reuters the children, all aged around 12, were shot dead by U.S. troops who had opened fire randomly after the explosion on Canal Street in eastern Baghdad.
The targeted Humvee was part of a military convoy driving through the street. Two American troops in the Humvee were evacuated from the scene, locals said. Later, it was reported that one US soldier was killed.
Elsewhere, two medics were killed and ten employees were wounded in a rocket attack on a hospital in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul Sunday.
The rocket slammed into Al-Salam hospital, in the eastern part of the city, at about 9:30 am, killing two medics who worked in the laboratory and wounding ten other employees, according to Major Salam Mohammed Amin of Iraqi police, cited by AFP.
Meanwhile, a new deal between officials in Fallujah and the US-led occupation was reached to extend the ceasefire "indefinitely" in the beseiged city and enforce a ban on carrying arms, a mediator involved in the talks told AFP.
Hashem al-Hassani of the Iraq Islamic Party Sunday added the deal includes a ban on carrying weapons as of Tuesday and the start of joint patrols of Iraqi police and Iraqi Civil Defense Corps forces and occupation troops in the city on the same day.
**PHOTO CAPTION***
A U.S. soldier checks the bags of Iraqi school children during a weapons search operation in the Talbiyah district in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 15, 2004. (AP)