A US air strike on a suspected insurgent safe house in the town of Falluja today has killed between 20 and 25 people, a senior official in the US-led coalition said.
The US military said it used "precision weapons" to carry out the attack on the house in the southeast of the city thought to have been used by insurgents loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian Islamist militant.
"Somewhere between 20 and 25 people were killed in today's strike," the coalition official said.
The US military said the house in the restive town of Falluja, some 50 km (30 miles) from Baghdad, was a "known Zarqawi network safe house" and was destroyed in the daylight strike, the third on suspected Falluja safe houses this week.
"This operation employed precision weapons to target and destroy the safe house and underscores the coalition's continuing resolve...to completely destroy terrorist networks," Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said in a statement.
Falluja residents said the house, in the southeast of the city, was reduced to rubble.
Washington, due to hand over to an interim Iraqi government on June 30th, accuses Zarqawi of links to al Qaeda and say he has masterminded a number of major attacks, as well as being responsible for the beheading of an American and a South Korean.
Militants in Falluja issued a taped statement today denying Zarqawi was holed up in the town.