Air Strike in Fallujah

1 house + 4 500-lb. bombs + 2 1000-lb bombs = overkill

Precision bombing is a lie.


Al-jazeera pegs the casualties at 8, though it says a family of 10 lived in 
the house.

Let freedom reign.

-x


U.S. jets attack Falluja safehouse
At least ten dead in air raid: reports



BAGHDAD (AP) - U.S forces dropped two tonnes of bombs on a purported militant 
safehouse in Falluja, killing at least 10 people, officials said, and turning 
the building into a 10-metre-deep pit of sand and rubble. 
The attack was the fifth air strike in the past two weeks in the area where 
the U.S. military says safehouses are being used by members of Jordanian 
militant Abu Musab Zarqawi's network. 

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi issued an unprecedented statement saying his 
government provided intelligence to the U.S. military for the strike. 

The interim government has been trying to figure out how to deal with the 
insurgents, and the air strike came just hours after it postponed an 
announcement of new security laws to deal with them. 

In Falluja, 50 kilometres west of Baghdad, rescue workers picked up body 
parts, witnesses said. Video from Associated Press Television News showed the 
explosion flung bricks blocks away, and blood was splashed on a nearby wall. 

Men gathered at the 10-metre-deep pit where the house had been and pulled out 
clothes, including a young child's shirt, from the rubble. 

"Is this acceptable to the Iraqi government?" asked an angry man at the scene, 
who declined to identify himself. "Where are human rights?" 

Dr. Diaa Jumaili of Falluja Hospital said 10 bodies had arrived there, most of 
them dismembered. Previous U.S. air strikes in Falluja have killed dozens. 

The military said it had dropped four 225-kilogram bombs and two 450-kilogram 
bombs. The attack used guided weapons and underscored the resolve of coalition 
and Iraqi forces "to jointly destroy terrorist networks within Iraq," the 
military said. 

Al-Zarqawi, said to be connected to Al Qaeda, is believed to be behind a 
series of co-ordinated attacks on police and security forces that killed 100 
people only days before U.S. forces handed over power to an Iraqi interim 
government. 

The attacks have led to fears that religious fanatics and Saddam Hussein 
loyalists may be joining forces to fight both the multinational force and the 
new Iraqi government. 

Allawi has promised tough measures against the insurgents, who have been 
creating chaos here since the fall of Saddam's government 14 months ago. 

The announced co-operation with the air strike appeared to be a first step 
toward that. 

In a statement soon after the attack, Allawi said Iraqi forces provided the 
intelligence for the location of the al-Zarqawi safehouse so the strike 
could "terminate those terrorists, whose booby-trapped cars and explosive 
belts have harvested the souls of innocent Iraqis without discrimination, 
destroying Iraqi schools, hospitals and police stations." 

Allawi appealed to all Iraqis to report the activities of insurgents. 

"The sovereign Iraqi people and our international partners are adamant that we 
will put an end to terrorism and chase those corrupt terrorists and will 
uproot them one by one," he said in the statement. 

Earlier in the day, Iraqi officials cancelled a news conference today where 
they had been expected to announce a limited amnesty for insurgents and 
martial law in parts of the country. 

The news conference with Justice Minister Malik Dohan al-Hassan and Human 
Rights Minister Bakhtiyar Amin was postponed indefinitely just as it was 
scheduled to begin. The government had cancelled a previous news conference on 
the same topic, suggesting disagreement within the government over the 
measures. 

Allawi also said today he wouldn't interfere with an Iraqi tribunal's right to 
decide whether Saddam and his top lieutenants should be executed on war crimes 
charges. 

In an interview with the Arab language television station Al-Arabiya, Allawi 
said he was willing to abide by whatever the court decided in the trial, which 
is not expected to begin for months. Iraq assumed legal custody of Saddam from 
the United States last week and re-instituted the death penalty, which had 
been suspended by U.S. occupation authorities. 

"As for the execution, that is for the court to decide - so long as a decision 
is reached impartially and fairly," he said. 

The broadly outlined charges against Saddam include the slaughter of Shiites 
during a 1991 uprising and a chemical weapons attack against Kurds in the 
northern city of Halabja. 

Thousands of Kurds demonstrated today in Halabja, demanding that Saddam and 
one of his key lieutenants, Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, 
be put to death for the attack that killed 5,000 people on March 16, 1988. 

"Every family in this city lost no less than five of its dear sons," said one 
demonstrator, Sabiha Ali, 50. 

Meanwhile, Iraq's vital oil exports were cut nearly in half as workers 
struggled today to repair a key pipeline shut down after looters broke into 
it, officials with the South Oil Company and traders said today. 

In southern Iraq, insurgents fired rockets at a government building early 
today, but instead struck nearby homes, killing one person and wounding eight 
others, police said. The attack targeted the province's main offices near the 
centre of the Basra. 

Interior Ministry officials also announced today the capture of two Iranians 
suspected of trying to detonate a car bomb. Iraqi officials have blamed 
foreign fighters and religious extremists for a wave of vehicle bombings in 
recent months. 

Also today, authorities in the town of Sulaiminyah in the Kurdish north of 
Iraq fired at a car rigged with explosives outside a hotel that housed 
diplomats, killing the driver, Kurdish official Dana Abdul Majid said. 

Although Iraq regained sovereignty last Monday, about 160,000 foreign troops, 
most of them Americans, remain here under a UN resolution to help the new 
government restore security. 


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