http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLO596306Sat Jan 24, 2009 2:20pm EST
BAGHDAD, Jan 24 (Reuters) - U.S. troops shot dead a couple and wounded their eight-year-old daughter during an early morning raid on their house in northern Iraq on Saturday, a senior Iraqi police officer said.
The U.S. military said the man was a suspected al Qaeda militant who had been running an assassination cell.
Major-General Turhan Abdul Rahman, deputy chief commander of police in Kirkuk province, said U.S. forces stormed the house of Dhiya Hussein, a former officer in the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein, in Hawija, 210 km (130 miles), north of Baghdad.
In a statement, the U.S. military said its forces killed the woman when she reached for something in her mattress that later turned out to be a pistol.