Conflicting accounts emerge of firefight in Iraq.(Chicago Tribune)

Byline: Mike Dorning and Christine Spolar

SAMARRA, Iraq _ A day after some of the fiercest fighting between armed Iraqis and U.S. soldiers since the fall of Baghdad, American forces and Iraqi residents of this loyalist stronghold sharply disagreed Monday over the death toll and other key details of the clash.

U.S. military officials said American forces killed 54 Iraqi fighters who had launched coordinated ambushes on two armored convoys delivering truckloads of newly printed Iraqi dinars to the branches of the Rasheed Bank in Samarra, a distribution point for a national currency exchange. An estimated 22 other fighters were injured and one man detained, U.S. officials said.

Those numbers contrasted with accounts from Iraqi police and hospital officials in Samarra who counted no more than eight bodies _ including a child, a woman and a 72-year-old Iranian man visiting a religious shrine _ that had been recovered from the conflict. At least 54 people were treated for injuries, including six children, according to Iraqi hospital officials.

But Iraqi officials also were cautious Monday in assessing the death toll in the small Samarra hospital, still edged with cars burned during the attack.

Maj. Saadoon Ahmed, an Iraqi police liaison for the hospital, said some injured were turned away and sent to neighboring towns because Samarra Public Hospital was overwhelmed. Ahmed added that many families who recovered dead relatives from the scene may have decided to forego medical authorities.

There was no way, Ahmed said, for hospital officials to readily classify any of the dead as civilians or fighters.