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| 03 September 2004 | Friday | 17 Rajab 1425 |
20 die in US strike on Fallujah
BAGHDAD, Sept 2: US air strike overnight on Fallujah killed 20 people. The jets raided targets suspected to be hideouts of al-Zarqawi.
Two buildings were destroyed and rescue workers had pulled 20 bodies from the rubble by Thursday morning as bulldozers cleared wreckage and a crowd dug through the debris for body parts and bits of flesh.
"All the wounded are families. Among the dead, there could be two or three children but the bodies are torn to pieces and it's difficult to tell," Doctor Seifeddin Taha of the Fallujah general hospital said.
The US military described the attack as a 'precision' strike on 'safe houses and meeting locations' for associates of Zarqawi. In Baghdad, US troops patrolling the streets of the Sadr City called on fighters from Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army to turn in their heavy weapons after the firebrand cleric called for a truce.
None of the militiamen in the sprawling Baghdad slum could immediately be seen handing over their rocket-propelled grenade launchers or mortars but a surprise ceasefire ordered by Sadr on Monday has so far been observed.
An aide to Sadr told AFP no deal had been reached yet to set up collection points throughout the Baghdad slum but added that a last round of talks to that purpose was due to be held on Thursday night.
Meanwhile, Poland kicked off two days of consultations with the United States and 11 nations serving under Polish command in Iraq over an expected reduction of Warsaw's forces next year.
Meanwhile Iraq's hostage crisis deepened further on Thursday when three Turkish truck drivers were reported killed, while an Arabic-language satellite television Al-Jazeera said it had received a video showing the execution of three Turkish hostages by a group linked to suspected Al Qaeda operative Mussab al-Zarqawi.
Police and medical officers in Iraq told AFP that three Turkish truck drivers were found shot dead on the roadside outside Samarra north of Baghdad, apparently the hostages. -AFP
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