RAMADI (Iraq), Aug 13: An attack on a US military patrol followed by US gunfire left 15 Iraqis dead and 17 wounded in a town west of Baghdad, residents said on Saturday, but the US military said it was not responsible.

Residents of Nasaf, a town outside the city of Ramadi, said a roadside bomb exploded next to a US armoured patrol as it passed near the Ibn al-Jawzi mosque shortly after prayers on Friday.

They said US troops opened fire immediately after the explosion, shooting towards people emerging from the mosque.

Munem Aftan, the director of Ramadi General Hospital, said 15 people were killed, including eight children, and 17 wounded.

Pools of blood lay on the steps outside the mosque, and bullet holes marked its walls.

But the US military said its troops had not been involved in any firing in the area.

“US forces were not involved in any shooting incident in eastern Ramadi or anywhere near a mosque,” Capt Jeffrey Pool, a spokesman for the Marines in Ramadi, said in an e-mail reply to written questions from journalists.

“US forces were certainly not involved in any indiscriminate fire incident,” he said.

Iraqi civilians frequently complain that US troops open fire wildly after they are attacked. The US military says it does ‘everything possible’ to avoid civilian casualties and is careful to respond to attacks in a measured fashion.

Human rights groups have documented scores of cases in which civilians have been shot dead after approaching US military roadblocks too quickly, or not following instructions to keep away from US military convoys as they pass.

Roadside bombs — explosives, typically artillery shells, buried in the side of the road and detonated as US vehicles pass — are the biggest killer of US troops in Iraq.

A US general said on Friday that roadside bomb attacks on US supply convoys in Iraq had doubled in the past year, although the number of casualties had declined because of increased use of armoured vehicles. —-Reuters