<p align="justify" class="title">Eight Iraqis were killed on Saturday, most of them security personnel, in a US air strike that apparently targeted them by mistake, a provincial official said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Eight people -- a senior intelligence official, five policemen and a woman -- were killed by a US strike on the centre of Al-Baghdadi," a town in western Iraq, the official said, asking not to be identified.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"It seems the strike was a mistake," the official said of the incident in the Euphrates Valley town, adjacent to the Ain al-Asad airbase 250 kilometres (160 miles) west of the capital.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The dead were travelling in a convoy which had been deployed to support an operation against suspected Islamic State group militants in the area.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The strike destroyed most of the vehicles in the convoy and also wounded 20 people, including the town's police chief, who was in a serious condition, the provincial official said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Iraq's Joint Operations Command, which coordinates the campaign against IS, said it had ordered a special forces raid in the town after receiving intelligence of a "meeting to be attended by terrorist commander Karim al-Samarmad".</p>.<p class="bodytext">It said it had requested "air support from the international coalition".</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Once the terrorist was arrested and while troops were carrying out searches, a grenade was thrown from an adjacent building."</p>.<p class="bodytext">As the special forces troops returned to base, they ran into a convoy of police and paramilitaries of the Hashed al-Shaabi auxiliary force that had been sent to support them.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The convoy was composed of pick-up trucks and the returning forces mistook them for jihadists and called in a coalition air strike, the JOC said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"An inquiry has been opened."</p>
<p align="justify" class="title">Eight Iraqis were killed on Saturday, most of them security personnel, in a US air strike that apparently targeted them by mistake, a provincial official said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Eight people -- a senior intelligence official, five policemen and a woman -- were killed by a US strike on the centre of Al-Baghdadi," a town in western Iraq, the official said, asking not to be identified.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"It seems the strike was a mistake," the official said of the incident in the Euphrates Valley town, adjacent to the Ain al-Asad airbase 250 kilometres (160 miles) west of the capital.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The dead were travelling in a convoy which had been deployed to support an operation against suspected Islamic State group militants in the area.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The strike destroyed most of the vehicles in the convoy and also wounded 20 people, including the town's police chief, who was in a serious condition, the provincial official said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Iraq's Joint Operations Command, which coordinates the campaign against IS, said it had ordered a special forces raid in the town after receiving intelligence of a "meeting to be attended by terrorist commander Karim al-Samarmad".</p>.<p class="bodytext">It said it had requested "air support from the international coalition".</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Once the terrorist was arrested and while troops were carrying out searches, a grenade was thrown from an adjacent building."</p>.<p class="bodytext">As the special forces troops returned to base, they ran into a convoy of police and paramilitaries of the Hashed al-Shaabi auxiliary force that had been sent to support them.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The convoy was composed of pick-up trucks and the returning forces mistook them for jihadists and called in a coalition air strike, the JOC said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"An inquiry has been opened."</p>