AP-A U.S. airstrike targeting an alleged militant safehouse in Fallujah killed some 17 people, including three children, according to doctors and accounts from the scene of the blast. Angry crowds gathered to mourn the victims and denounce the United States.
“There is only one God, Allah!” crowds chanted at the Fallujah General Hospital, where the bombing casualties were brought before dawn Thursday. A blanket filled with body parts could be seen lying on the ground, while relatives loaded corpses into the back of a pickup truck for burial.
“It is because of the Americans,” one man shouted.
The U.S. military said it had carried out a precision strike late Wednesday on a safehouse in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, used by followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He is a Jordanian militant believed responsible for bombings, kidnappings and other violence in Iraq.
Witnesses said the strike hit a residential house in the southern neighborhood of al-Jubail.
Dr. Ahmed Hamid, of Fallujah General Hospital, said the bodies of nine civilians, including three children, had been brought to the hospital. An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw eight more bodies pulled from the rubble.
U.S. forces have repeatedly carried out airstrikes in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, since Marines pulled back after a three-week siege of the city in April aimed at rooting out Sunni Muslim insurgents.
West of the capital, U.S. forces detained the mayor of Qaim, near the Syrian border, along with some two dozen councilmen during a raid on City Hall offices, said police Capt. Ahmed al-Ugaili.
The U.S. military did not immediately comment on the raid.
How quickly do we forget how dangerous these people are?
