US planes bomb Falluja

The US military on Thursday said they attacked a safe house belonging to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian accused by Washington of being a "terrorist".

Hassan Ali Daly, Aljazeera's correspondent in the town, said US fighter planes targeted a building in the al-Jibail neighbourhood southwest of the town.

US planes had targeted another suspected safe house in Falluja last week.

Medical sources said 10 people have also been wounded in the latest air raid. Efforts were underway to clear the rubble of the house to rescue possible survivors buried underneath.

US statement

"On June the 30th, multinational forces conducted another strike on a known Zarqawi network safe house in southwest Falluja based on multi-confirmations of Iraqi and multinational intelligence," Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the US military in Iraq, said in a statement.

News agencies quoted some witnesses as saying that four bodies had been pulled from the house.

"The house was completely destroyed. It is basically rubble," said one resident in Falluja. "The strike left a huge hole where the building was."

Witnesses said clashes involving small arms and mortar fire had broken out between US forces and Iraqi resistance fighters on the eastern edge of the town.

They said the fighting was still ongoing.

Aljazeera + Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/7732A66D-252E-4D85-8608-8AF6237D2DAD.htm