"ITV's Middle East correspondent, Julian Manyon, has challenged the US military's claims to have shot dead 54 Iraqi guerrillas in a new row over the way the conflict is being spun.

[....]

"The truth of this feat of American arms seems to be something like this: relatively small numbers of Saddam loyalists and local men fired on the American convoys and were met with a blizzard of machine-gun and automatic grenade fire," he said.

Iraqi officials in Samarra immediately challenged the US's version of events, accusing American soldiers of spraying fire at random people on the city's streets and killing civilians - an account that appears to tally with Manyon's description."