TALL AFAR, Sept 9: At least 57 people were killed when US-led forces spearheaded overnight assaults on Iraq's northern trouble spot of Tall Afar and Fallujah, officials said on Thursday.

US warplanes hammered Tall Afar from night until afternoon as ground clashes dragged on for 12 hours between coalition forces and insurgents. A health official said at least 26 people were killed and 71 wounded from the bombing alone - the second US-led raid on the town in five days.

However the US army reported up to 57 killed. Many bodies strewn in the streets could not be collected and Doctor Rabih Yassin accused US troops and the Iraqi national guard of turning back ambulances carrying medical supplies.

The US military said a "large terrorist element" has "displaced local Iraqi security forces" in the area. "Today, multinational forces and Iraqi security forces initiated operations to eliminate this threat," it said in a statement.

In Fallujah, the greatest symbol of resistance to US occupation in Iraq, jets pounded the city in a relentless series of night-time raids, killing 12 Iraqis, including five children and two women, a doctor said. Nine others were wounded.

At one house flattened by a US missile, an AFP correspondent saw locals drag five bodies out of the rubble and children help retrieve pieces of flesh. Witnesses said the family who lived in the house was sleeping on the roof when the missile struck, blowing their bodies to smithereens.

US warplanes have pummelled the western city, which the military has termed as a den of foreign terror networks, ever since seven marines and three Iraqi national guardsmen were killed in a car bombing on Monday.

The Marine Corps claimed the latest raid was a "precision strike" on a hideout used by militants loyal to Iraq's most wanted man, alleged Al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has a 25-million-dollar price on his head. -AFP