- BAGHDAD (AFP) -- US forces
unleashed their third air strike in a week on what they said was a terrorist
hideout in the hotspot city of Fallujah, killing up to 25 people, as Iraq
braced for more unrest before the transfer of sovereignty.
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- With violence sweeping the country before the US-led
coalition hands power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, the name
of alleged Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi was once more in the
spotlight.
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- "Today, coalition forces conducted another strike
on a known Zarqawi network safe house in southeastern Fallujah," the
coalition's deputy director of operations, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt,
said in a statement.
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- "This operation employed precision weapons to target
and destroy the safe house," he added.
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- A senior military official said 20 to 25 people were
killed in the attack, which was along the same lines as two others on suspected
Zarqawi hideouts in Fallujah over the past week.
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- The total death toll from the three raids is 59 to 64
people, the US military said, warning that it would not shrink from carrying
out further missions.
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- "Wherever and whenever we find elements of the Zarqawi
network, we will attack them," Kimmitt said.
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- But the strikes left behind a shell-shocked city, 50
kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad.
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- "A US aircraft fired what looked to be two missiles
on the house" in the residential district of Shuhada, local Ayman
Ibrahim told AFP.
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- His claim was backed up by another resident, who asked
to remain anonymous.
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- A leading sheikh, Abdallah Janabi, condemning the attacks
as launched "under the pretext that Zarqawi is based in Fallujah."
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- "There are no foreign fighters here," said
Janabi.
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- An Internet message attributed to Zarqawi on Wednesday
mocked the US attacks.
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- They are taken "under the pretext that I am in Fallujah.
This is not correct, because those fools do not know that I travel in Iraq
where I am greeted everywhere by my brothers," he said.
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- Zarqawi, a fugitive Jordanian Islamist who has a 10-million-dollar
US bounty on his head, has been accused by US and Iraqi officials of being
behind numerous atrocities in Iraq. Some believe he may be holed up in
Fallujah, a bastion of Sunni Muslim opposition to the US-led occupation.
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- Fighters in Baquba, who took part in a wave of coordinated
attacks on Thursday that killed some 90 people, pledged allegiance to Zarqawi's
militant faction Tawhid wa al-Jihad (Unification and Holy War) in a pamphlet
handed out to residents, threatening them with death if they helped US
forces.
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- A cleric, considered close to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
announced the assassination of prominent cleric Sheikh Hussein al-Harithi
in Baghdad on Thursday, blaming radical Sunni Muslims for the killing.
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- Flexing his muscles in the face of the insurgency, Iraq's
defence minister said he had drafted drastic measures to deal with the
violence in Baghdad and may create a state of emergency in other areas.
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- "We have an urgent plan for Baghdad and also for
a state of emergency for other provinces," Hazem al-Shaalan told a
news conference, without clarifying what either measure would involve.
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- In the aftermath of Thursday's violence, cities around
Iraq remained on high alert while officers scrambled to find clues about
who was behind the attacks.
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- Two headless bodies were found in the restive Iraqi city
of Kirkuk, where police were on high alert after the deadly attacks, officials
said.
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- Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr's armed militia sought
to prove it served the national interest as it said it was laying down
its weapons and backed the country's interim government in the run-up to
Iraqi self rule on June 30.
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- The Mehdi Army had first announced its truce late Thursday
by loudspeaker in Sadr City and said it was ready to help protect important
sites from terror attacks.
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- Away from the action on the street, a hearing for a female
soldier accused of posing in a photograph next to the corpse of an Iraqi
detainee at Abu Ghraib prison offered further evidence that senior officials
were aware of the abuse.
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- During a two-day preliminary hearing at a military court
in Baghdad, one witness told how a top military intelligence commander
at the notorious prison was present when the detainee died.
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- Specialist Sabrina Harman, 26, faces a range of charges
including mistreating detainees and having her photograph taken with the
corpse of a detainee who apparently died during an interrogation.
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- The photo was one of the most shocking images in the
Abu Ghraib scandal that broke in late April and sparked questions of whether
senior officers encouraged prison guards to beat and sexually humiliate
prisoners.
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- On a bright note, eight British servicemen detained for
straying into Iranian waters returned to base outside the main southern
city of Basra, ending a four-day ordeal. A spokesman said they were tired
by otherwise unharmed.
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