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US air strikes slam Fallujah, kill at least 17 Iraqis

An Iraqi pushing a cart walks past a US tank patrolling Baghdad's Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. US troops patrolling the streets of Sadr City called on fighters from radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army to turn in their heavy weapons after the firebrand cleric called for a truce. ``We call on the Mehdi Army to hand over their heavy weaponry according to an agreement with Naim al-Qaabi,'' troops on two tanks and two Humvees shouted through loudspeakers, referring to a senior Sadr aide in Baghdad. PHOTO: AFP

Seventeen Iraqis were killed and six wounded in a US air strike overnight on suspected Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi safe houses in Fallujah, medical officials and the US military said yesterday.

Two buildings were destroyed when a US fighter jet fired two missiles around 11:45 pm at two buildings in the residential neighborhood of Jebel in Fallujah, a hotspot of radical Sunni insurgency 50km west of Baghdad, police and medical officials said.

"We now have 17 dead people and six wounded," said Doctor Seifeddin Taha, from the Fallujah general hospital.

"All the wounded are families. Among the dead, there could be two or three children but the bodies are torn to pieces and it's difficult to tell," he told AFP overnight.

The US military confirmed the attack in a statement, describing it as a "precision" strike on "safe houses and meeting locations" for associates of the Jordanian-born Zarqawi whom US officials blame for dozens of car bomb attacks in Iraq and who has a US$25-million bounty on his head.

Earlier in the day, Zarqawi supporters were observed removing a corpse from a car trunk and burying the body in southern Fallujah, the military said.

The military had no immediate casualty figures from the attack.

Five people were killed and 42 wounded on Saturday when US marines pounded suspected extremist positions in the restive city, a bastion for the country's most violent-prone groups which the US military and Iraqi forces have failed to rein in.

The US military has regularly bombed suspected Zarqawi safe houses in Fallujah since June.

In April, Fallujah was the scene of bitter fighting, leaving hundreds dead as US marines and insurgents clashed in the streets. US forces besieged the city after four American civilian security contractors were killed in Fallujah and two of the bodies mutilated.
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