US warplanes pounded a suspected hideout of al-Qaeda-linked militants in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah yesterday, killing at least 16 people and wounding 12, officials and witnesses said. The strike came a day after a surge in violence killed 78 people across Iraq.
The US military said jets carried out a precision strike on a site in Fallujah where several members of a group led by Jordanian-born terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were meeting.
"Intelligence sources reported the presence of several key al-Zarqawi operatives who have been responsible for numerous terrorist attacks against Iraqi civilians, Iraqi Security Forces and multinational forces," the military said in a statement.
The military said reports indicated the strikes had achieved their aim, but did not name the operatives.
Witnesses said the bombing targeted the city's residential al-Shurta neighborhood, damaging buildings and raising clouds of black smoke.
Women and children
Dr. Adel Khamis of the Fallujah General Hospital said at least 16 people were killed, including women and children, and 12 others wounded. An ambulance rushing from the area of the blasts was hit by a shell, killing the driver, a paramedic and five patients inside the vehicle, said another hospital official, Hamid Salaman.
"The conditions here are miserable -- an ambulance was bombed, three houses destroyed and men and women killed," the hospital's director, Rafayi Hayad al-Esawi, told pan-Arab Al-Jazeera television by telephone. "The American army has no morals."
Witnesses said that US warplanes repeatedly swooped low over the city and that artillery units deployed on the outskirts of the city also opened fire. The explosions started at sunrise and continued for several hours.
Marketplace
One explosion went off in a market place in Fallujah as the first sellers had just begun to set up their stalls, wounding several people and shattering windows, witnesses said.
US forces pulled out of Fallujah in April after ending a three-week siege that left hundreds dead and a trail of devastation. The US Marines have not patrolled inside Fallujah since then and Sunni insurgents have strengthened their hold on the city.
West of Baghdad, assailants broke into a local police station in Latifiyah and forced the handful of officers inside to leave before blowing up the building, police said yesterday.
Nobody was injured in the Sunday night blast, said police Lieutenant Colonel Sahi Abdullah. Iraqi police have regularly been attacked by insurgents who view them as collaborators with American troops.
Insurgents hammered central Baghdad with intense mortar and rocket barrages, heralding a day of violence that killed 78 people nationwide as security appeared to spiral out of control.
At least 37 people were killed in Baghdad alone. Many of them died when a US helicopter fired on a disabled US Bradley fighting vehicle.
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