US strikes "Al-Qaeda safe house" in Iraq, 22 dead

U.S. forces launched an air strike yesterday on what they said was a safe house linked to elusive Al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the Iraqi city of Falluja, killing 22 people in a "precision strike".

US military officers said there was no sign Zarqawi himself - who has a $10 million price on his head - was in the house when it was destroyed.

Furious Iraqis said the dead included women and children.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said in Baghdad the house was being used by fighters loyal to Zarqawi, accused by Washington of leading a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and of decapitating a US hostage last month.

"We have significant evidence that there were members of the Zarqawi network in the house," Kimmitt said.

"Today coalition forces conducted a strike on a known Zarqawi safe house in southwest Falluja based on multiple confirmations of actionable intelligence."

Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq, is portrayed by the Americans as a key figure in terror attacks destablising the country at a critical time before the US occupying power hands over sovereignty to an Iraqi interim government on June 30.

There have been no tangible signs that the military is closing in on him in Iraq, described by the United States as a key front in its war on terror.

That campaign may have failed in Falluja yesterday but the pro-American authorities in neighbouring Saudi Arabia said they had killed Al-Qaeda's leader in the kingdom, Abdulaziz al-Muqrin, and three other prominent militants.

The Saudi operation came hours after the group carried out its threat to behead US hostage Paul Johnson on Friday.

Traumatised residents of Falluja seemed too busy counting their dead to follow the winners and losers in the war on Zarqawi and other Muslim militant leaders bent on driving the United States out of the Middle East.

They said two missiles had been fired at the house by a US plane yesterday morning, flattening the building. Kimmitt said the US strike had caused secondary blasts as ammunition inside the house exploded.

"An American plane hit this house and three others were damaged. Only body parts are left," a witness said, as rescuers dug through the rubble of the shattered house for survivors.

"They brought us 22 corpses, children, women and youth," Ahmed Hassan, a cemetery worker, said after the blast.

Washington says the Jordanian-born Zarqawi has been the mastermind behind a series of bloody suicide attacks in Iraq that have sowed chaos and claimed hundreds of lives. It says he was also the man shown beheading US hostage Nicholas Berg in a grisly video posted on the Internet last month.

Zarqawi's group claimed responsibility for the assassination of Iraq's Governing Council leader, Izzedin Salim, on May 17. The most recent attack claimed by the group was last Monday's suicide car bombing in Baghdad that killed 13 people.

US commanders say pacifying Falluja, one of Iraq's most rebellious cities, is crucial for stability ahead of the formal handover of sovereignty.

Hundreds of Iraqis were killed in the city in April in fighting between US Marines and guerrillas, sparking outrage in Iraq. The US military agreed a truce and handed responsibility for security to an Iraqi force that includes many former officers in Saddam Hussein's armed forces.

Last month, Marines killed around 40 Iraqis in an attack on a house in the western desert near the Syrian border. The US military said the house was a staging point for foreign fighters but survivors said a wedding party had been massacred.

Guerillas bent on disrupting this month's handover of sovereignty brought Iraq's crucial oil exports to a halt this week with attacks on two key southern pipelines.

Yesterday, a roadside bomb targeted foreign workers on a road southwest of Basra, flipping over their four-wheel-drive vehicle. Police said a Portuguese civilian and an Iraqi policeman were killed. An Indian and an Iraqi were wounded.

In Lisbon, a foreign ministry official identified the dead Portuguese as 36-year-old Antonio Jose Monteiro Abelha and said he worked for a telecoms company, Lusa news agency reported.

Iraq has been unable to export any oil since the sabotage attacks earlier this week.

Anti-US insurgents have mounted what appear to be concerted attacks on the oil industry, nascent Iraqi security forces and government officials in the run-up to June 30.

The US military reported the deaths of two more American soldiers, bringing to 614 the total killed in action since last year's invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.

One soldier died of wounds after an ambush near Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, on Friday. Another was killed at a US base in the capital by a mortar attack that also wounded a foreign contractor working for Kellogg Brown & Root.

On Thursday, a suicide car bomber killed 35 people at an Iraqi army recruiting centre in Baghdad and a car bomb killed six members of the civil defence corps in Balad, to the north.