Agence-France Presse reports that U.S. troops opened fire on a group of protesters in Mosul, Iraq, killing ten:

At least 10 people were killed and scores wounded in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul when US troops fired on a crowd angered by a speech by the new US-backed governor, witnesses reported. The charges were denied by a US military spokesman in the city Tuesday, who said troops had first come under fire from at least two gunmen and fired back, without aiming at the crowd.

Witnesses provide this account:

But witnesses charged that US troops fired into the crowd after it became increasingly hostile towards the new governor, Mashaan al-Juburi.

"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," said Ayad Hassun, 37.

"Dozens of people fell," he said, his own shirt stained with blood.

"The people moved toward the government building, the children threw stones, the Americans started firing," another witness, Marwan Mohammed, 50, told AFP.

According to a third witness, Abdulrahman Ali, 49, the US soldiers opened fire when they saw the crowd running at the government building.

Meanwhile, as the process of determining future Iraqi leadership got underway in Nasiriyah in Southern Iraq, 20,000 marched in protest chanting, "Yes to freedom... Yes to Islam... No to America, No to Saddam." U.S. media censorship has emerged.

And US forces tried for the first time Tuesday to prevent the media from covering a third day of anti-US protests outside the hotel housing a US operations base in central Baghdad.

Update: Additional news sources on the incident:

New York Times

The Independent

Arab News