Deaths big blow for handover

FALLUJAH - The handover of power in Iraq - now a mere nine days away - appears to be in a state of renewed crisis after a United States air strike on homes in Fallujah brought to an end a week in which large-scale violence once again boiled to the surface.

Twenty-two civilians, including eight women and children, are said to have died in the attack, which follows last week's devastating car bomb outside a Baghdad Army recruitment centre.

The US said the air strike was on what it described as a safe house linked to al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

US military officers said there was no sign that Zarqawi himself - who has a US$10 million ($16 million) price on his head - was in the house when it was destroyed.

Furious Iraqis said the dead included women and children.

Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt said in Baghdad that the house was being used by fighters loyal to Zarqawi, accused by Washington of leading a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and of decapitating an American hostage last month.

"We have significant evidence that there were members of the Zarqawi network in the house," Kimmitt said.

Zarqawi is portrayed by the Americans as a key figure in al Qaeda attacks destabilising the country.

Residents said a US plane fired two missiles at the house yesterday, flattening the building.

Kimmitt said the US strike had caused secondary blasts as ammunition inside the house exploded.

"An American plane hit this house and three others were damaged. Only body parts are left," a witness said as rescuers dug through the rubble of the shattered house for survivors.

Ahmed Hassan, a cemetery worker, said after the blast: "They brought us 22 corpses, children, women and youth".

The latest incidents come after a string of smaller car bombings, the assassinations of two Government officials and the security chief of the main oil company in Kirkuk in the north, an escalating series of clashes between US forces and Iraqi militants around Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, and a concerted series of attacks on the country's oil supply system.

These attacks have temporarily cut off all exports from the southern fields around the port of Basra.

These events have made for the bloodiest period in Iraq for several weeks and underline what US and Iraqi officials have known all along - that the handover is fraught with risks as well as political opportunities.

The stakes have been raised because more than one country's future depends on the outcome.

Iraq is the biggest vulnerability facing President George W. Bush in his battle for re-election in November.

After the disastrous - and continuing - revelations of torture inflicted on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, after the damaging conclusions of the commission looking into the attacks of September 11, which has dismissed White House claims of a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, after the embarrassing failure to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Bush desperately needs to offer the electorate some indication that things are progressing in the right direction.

US commanders say pacifying Fallujah is crucial for stability.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq