Air strikes kill 16 as US targets militant meeting

US FORCES launched air strikes on Fallujah yesterday, targeting what they said was a meeting of key loyalists of their top foe in Iraq, Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Iraqi doctors at Fallujah Hospital said 16 Iraqis were killed, including women and children. The Health Ministry in Baghdad put the Iraqi toll at 20 men. But the US said its intelligence suggested only Zarqawi followers were killed.

Meanwhile, the Italian government stepped up its efforts to free two of its citizens who had been taken hostage as a video purporting to show the beheading of a Turkish driver kidnapped in Iraq last month surfaced yesterday on the website of an Islamic militant group.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini flew to Kuwait yesterday to appeal for the release of two Italian hostages ahead of a 24-hour execution deadline set by their captors. Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, who worked on projects to help Iraqi children, were the first Western women to be kidnapped in Iraq.

Underlining their plight, a videotape dated August 17 appeared on the website of Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad group appearing to show armed men slitting the throat of a Turkish truck driver abducted in mid-August.

The Fallujah attacks followed one of the most violent days in Iraq in recent months in which at least 110 people were killed in Baghdad and other Iraqi towns. 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, according to one hospital official.

“Intelligence sources reported the presence of several key Zarqawi operatives who have been responsible for numerous terrorist attacks against Iraqi civilians, Iraqi security forces and multinational forces,” a US military statement said.

But Dr Iyad Mohamed of Fallujah Hospital said 16 Iraqis were killed and 12 wounded in the US attacks in Falluja, 32 miles west of Baghdad. The US military has accused Iraqis in Fallujah of exaggerating the extent of civilian deaths, while most residents insist civilians are being targeted.

Elsewhere, another six Iraqis died after US forces opened fire on a village near the town of Hilla, 100km south of Baghdad, Abdel Zahra al-Nasrawi, director of al-Musayib hospital, said. A US spokeswoman had no immediate information.

The town is a cauldron of anti-US anger. US marines pulled out of Fallujah in May after weeks of fighting with guerrillas which killed hundreds of Iraqis and sparked widespread outrage in the country.

Security was handed over to an Iraqi force which has since disintegrated.

The US military has conceded it is not in control of some parts of Iraq, including Fallujah and the nearby city of Ramadi. US and Iraqi officials say they are launching a drive to pacify these areas in time for elections due in January 2005.

Washington says Fallujah has become a haven for guerrillas and foreign fighters loyal to Zarqawi.