Those charges were denied by a US military spokesman here, who said troops had come under fire from at least two gunmen and fired back, without aiming at the crowd.

Dr. Ayad Al-Ramadhani said at the city hospital that “there are perhaps 100 wounded and at least 12 dead” following the shooting near the local government offices in a central square.

Three witnesses questioned by AFP and casualties who spoke to hospital staff said US troops had fired on the crowd, which was becoming increasingly hostile toward Governor Mashaan Al-Juburi as he was making a pro-US speech.

An AFP journalist saw a wrecked car in the square and ambulances ferrying wounded people to hospital, while a US aircraft flew over the northern city at low altitude.

At US Central Command’s war headquarters in Qatar, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told a press briefing he had seen no military reports of the incident and could not confirm it.

But the military spokesman in Mosul later said “there were protesters outside, 100 to 150. There was fire. We returned fire.”

He said the fire came from a roof opposite the building, about 75 meters away. “We didn’t fire at the crowd, but at the top of the building,” the spokesman added. “There were at least two gunmen. I don’t know if they were killed. The firing was not intensive but sporadic, and lasted up to two minutes.

A man who said he was a witness told a different story. “We were at the market place near the government building, where Juburi was making a speech,” said Marwan Mohammed, 50. “He said everything would be restored, water, electricity, and that democracy was the Americans.

“As for the Americans, they were going through the crowd with their flag. They placed themselves between the civilians and the building.

“The people moved toward the government building, the children threw stones, the Americans started firing. Then they prevented the people from recovering the bodies,” he told AFP.

At the hospital, where angry relatives of the dead and wounded voiced hatred of Americans and Westerners, a doctor gave a similar account from patients.

“Juburi said the people must cooperate with the United States. The crowd called him a liar, and tempers rose as he continued to talk. They threw objects at him, overturned his car which exploded,” said Dr. Said Altah. “The wounded said Juburi asked the Americans to fire,” he said.

Ayad Hassun, 37, another witness, said the trouble broke out after the crowd interrupted Juburi’s speech with cries of, “There is no God but God and Muhammad is His Messenger.”

“You are with Saddam’s Fedayeen,” retorted Juburi, to which the crowd chanted that “the only democracy is to make the Americans leave.”

He explained that 20 US soldiers escorted Juburi, an opposition leader installed as Mosul governor, back into the building as the situation ran out of control with the crowd’s protests growing louder.

“They (the soldiers) climbed on top of the building and first fired at a building near the crowd, with the glass falling on the civilians. People started to throw stones, then the Americans fired at them,” Hassun said.

“Dozens of people fell,” said the witness, whose own shirt was blood-stained.

According to a third witness, Abdulrahman Ali, a 49-year-old laborer, the American soldiers opened fire when they saw the crowd running at the government building.