Rejecting an Italian journalist's suggestion she was targeted by U.S. troops intent on killing her, the White House has called the allegations "absurd."

Talking to reporters on Monday, White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said Giuliana Sgrena's allegation -- that her vehicle was deliberately shot at by U.S. troops as it headed to the Baghdad airport -- was baseless.

"I think it's absurd to make any such suggestion that our men and women in uniform deliberately targeted innocent civilians," McClellan said. "That's just absurd."

The route to the airport, he added, "is one of the most dangerous roads in Iraq."

"It is a dangerous road and it is a combat zone that our coalition forces are in, and oftentimes they have to make split-second decisions to protect their own security and we regret this incident, and we are going to fully investigate what exactly occurred," McClellan said.

Sgrena, a writer for the Italian left-wing daily Il Manifesto abducted in Baghdad on Feb. 4, was in a car with Italian secret service agent Nicola Calipari when their vehicle came under fire on Friday.

She was wounded and Calipari died in the incident.

Calipari had just secured her release after spending nearly a month held by kidnappers in Iraq.

Conflicting Accounts

In a broadcast interview this weekend, Sgrena described how gunfire erupted as their vehicle approached an American roadside checkpoint.

She went on to suggest that she was targeted because her release came after Italian officials negotiated with her captors.

"The fact that the Americans don't want negotiations to free the hostages is known," Sgrena told Sky TG24 television.

"The fact that they do everything to prevent the adoption of this practice to save the lives of people held hostages, everybody knows that. So I don't see why I should rule out that I could have been the target."

In an newspaper interview published Monday, Sgrena relented somewhat, but maintained her suspicions remain.

"I believe, but it's only a hypothesis, that the happy ending to the negotiations must have been irksome," she told Corriere della Sera.

Neither Italian nor American officials have disclosed details of the negotiations that led to Sgrena's release.

In light of conflicting accounts of the incident, both the U.S. military and the White House have promised a full investigation.

While Sgrena wrote in her published account of the shooting that their car was moving at "regular speed" when it was fired upon without warning, the U.S. military has insisted adequate warning was given for the speeding vehicle to halt.

"The Americans are against this type of operation. For them, war is war, human life doesn't count for much."

Calipari honoured

After lying in state at Rome's Vittoriano monument, where he was visited by tens of thousands, Calipari was buried in a state funeral Monday afternoon.

"He died as a hero, and I cannot forget he had also helped to free us," Maurizio Agliana, one of four Italian security guards kidnapped in Iraq last April, told mourners gathered in Rome's Santa Maria degli Angeli Church.

U.S. Ambassador Mel Sembler joined Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and other Italian dignitaries at the state funeral, but Sgrena did not attend as she remained in hospital recovering from a shrapnel wound.

The intelligence officer, killed by a single bullet to the temple as he tried to shield Sgrena from as many as 400 rounds fired at the vehicle, will be awarded posthumously with a gold medal of valour.

With files from CTV News and The Associated Press