Dead boy a pawn as factions fight

Three bullets punched into the trunk of the yellow cab, and four more tore through the rear window. Two ripped through a paper flag of an Iraqi Turkoman party, and one took off most of the 8-year-old boy's head.

From there, the story varies. The Turkomans - a minority from Turkmenistan who are fearful of being drowned by a Kurdish influx - say he was killed in a drive-by of Kurdish fighters firing at a political party office on Sunday.

Kurds on the street were blaming the killing on Turkish intelligence agents, who they charged were trying to stir up unrest to justify an incursion. The word among Turkomans is that three Kurds were shot in retaliation, one fatally.

Obeid Mohammed Jwamer, 54, who said he was in a taxi near the taxi Hussein was in when the shooting started, said the boy was caught in the crossfire during an argument between Kurdish fighters and Turkomans.

The boy's wounded father, Mohsin Jalal Dahssin, said Kurds chased him from the taxi and shot his son in the head.

The differing stories, the payback shootings and the politicization show the challenges ahead for U.S. peacekeepers. They must navigate through a culture where facts change with a speaker's allegiance, most people are armed, and revenge and escalation are customary responses to injury.

The politicization started almost immediately. The Turkomans, eager to show that their fears were justified, took Hussein's body to their headquarters and displayed it outside one of the hotels housing the media.

The next day, outside the office where the boy died, Turkomans with Kalashnikovs stood guard and spoke of revenge. "If we don't kill a number of them, they will think that we are weak," said Imat Avcix.

Later in the afternoon, the Turkomans paraded the boy's coffin through streets, where someone had written, in Turkish, "Kirkuk is ours."

In the governor's office, Faraeedan Abdulqadir, the former interior minister of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the parties in charge of northern Iraq, downplayed the incident and the protests.

"The Turkomans strive to get more than they need," he said. "The Turkomans want the whole country."

Hussein's aunt said the boy's death is worth it if it brings greater power to the Turkomans.

"It's okay," she said. "I'm happy because I went to the Turkomans' headquarters and they told me we took our revenge." Three Kurdish fighters had been shot, she said, one fatally.

Abdulqadir confirmed the incident, but not the numbers.