http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-06-20-iraq-airstrike_x.htm
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=6E2040E2-F7DD-404D-8C50B5AD2AF7D63C
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5463967
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) ? A senior officer of the U.S.-backed Fallujah Brigade on Sunday disputed U.S. claims that an American airstrike had hit a safehouse of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network.
The Health Ministry said at least 16 people were killed in the attack Saturday; witnesses put the number of dead at least 20, including women and children.
Col. Mohammed Awad said members of the Fallujah Brigade had investigated the site and "affirmed to us that the inhabitants of the houses were ordinary families including women, children and elders."
"There was no sign that foreigners have lived in the house," Awad said.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, coalition deputy operations chief, told reporters Saturday that multiple intelligence sources reported that the house was used by the al-Zarqawi network, which U.S. officials believe operates in Fallujah.
The discrepant versions of the attack could strain relations between the Americans and the Iraqi force established last month to take responsibility for law and order in Fallujah after the end of the three-week Marine siege.
Marines besieged Fallujah in April after four American security contractors were killed in an ambush in the city and their bodies mutilated. Ten Marines and hundreds of Iraqis, many of them civilians, died before the siege was lifted and security was handed over to the Fallujah Brigade.
Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant thought to have ties to al-Qaeda, has been blamed for a string of car bombs across Iraq, including a blast Thursday that killed 35 people and wounded 145 at an Iraqi military recruiting center in Baghdad.
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=6E2040E2-F7DD-404D-8C50B5AD2AF7D63C
Iraqi military officers in the city of Fallujah say there is no sign any insurgents were in a house flattened during a U.S. attack that reportedly killed at least 20 civilians.
The Iraqi officers say Sunday women and children were among those killed, but an investigation produced no evidence foreign insurgents had used the house.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5463967
Falluja's police chief and a senior officer in the Falluja Brigade in charge of security in the fiercely anti-U.S. town denied that foreign fighters had operated from the house.
"We inspected the damage, we looked through the bodies of the women and children and elderly. This was a family," Brigadier Nouri Aboud of the Falluja Brigade told Reuters.
"There is no sign of foreigners having lived in the house. Zarqawi and his men have no presence in Falluja."