Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News

BAGHDAD, 20 June 2004 — US forces killed at least 22 people yesterday in a “precision strike” on a house in Fallujah that the military said was being used by Al-Qaeda.

Furious Iraqis said the dead included women and children. But Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said here the house was being used by fighters loyal to Abu Musab Al-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 insisted. But officers said there was no sign that Zarqawi himself was there when the house was destroyed.

Fallujah residents said two missiles had been fired at the house by a US plane in the 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.

Fallujah residents said more bodies still lay under the rubble of two houses destroyed in the raid.

It was the first American attack on the flashpoint city, 50 km west of Baghdad, since US Marines withdrew at the beginning of May after a month of fierce clashes.

Meanwhile, US senators said Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi had told them that Baghdad would not try to take custody of former dictator Saddam Hussein before the country was properly ready to try him.

Sen. Joe Biden, a Democrat from Delaware, discussed the issue with Allawi here along with US fellow Democrat and Senate minority leader Tom Daschle and Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina.

“Saddam and others should be tried by an Iraqi court, by an Iraqi government in front of the Iraqi people,” said Biden in response to a reporter’s question about whether a plan for Saddam and other high-level detainees was discussed.

“I can relay confidence that they (the Iraqis) are not going to attempt to gain custody and try him before they are fully ready, before they are ready to put on a case, before they are fully prepared to be able to demonstrate to their people that this is fair trail and demonstrate to the region and the world,” Biden said.