"There are perhaps 100 wounded and 10 to 12 dead" following the shooting near the local government offices in a central square, Dr. Ayad al-Ramadhani said at the emergency department of the city hospital.

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 towards the new 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.

US forces in Mosul refused to comment to AFP.

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

"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 that the trouble broke out after the crowd interrupted Juburi's speech with cries of, "There is no God but God and Mohammed is his prophet."

"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 labourer, the American soldiers opened fire when they saw the crowd running at the government building.

A few hours after the incident, the building was guarded by US troops as an angry crowd was kept 100 metres (yards) away.

In an interview Monday, Juburi said a deal with local Arab tribal chiefs saw most of Saddam Hussein's forces peacefully put down their arms and disband in Mosul, which fell to US control last Friday.

Juburi, head of the Damascus-based Patriotic Iraqi Party, said he had regularly addressed Mosul's residents over radio and television before entering the mostly Arab city with Kurdish forces.

"Every day, I said I would threaten no one's security, whether they were a member of the Baath Party, intelligence, police or supporters of Saddam. Mosul residents trust my family," he said.

SPACE.WIRE