"A tank started to shoot at us without any sign or any light," Sgrena maintained to reporters on Monday. "It was not a checkpoint, so I can't explain it."

She also hinted that U.S. forces deliberately targeted her, saying that they had been told she and her rescuers were on their way.

"Our car was driving slowly," and "the Americans fired without motive," she wrote in a report for Il Manifesto on Sunday.

U.S. military spokesmen have admitted that troops fired on Sgrena's car, but did so only because it was trying to run a military checkpoint, but that no tanks were involved in the incident.

Editor's note: