Iraqis killed in strikes near Baghdad airport

7.45am

BAGHDAD - Dozens of Iraqis, including some civilians, were killed in the village of Furat near Baghdad airport on Thursday evening in what witnesses said was a barrage of US artillery and rocket attacks, a Reuters reporter said.

Iraqi officials put the total death toll in and around the village at 83, but this could not be independently confirmed.

Reuters correspondent Nadim Ladki said there were more than 120 people wounded in the attack on the village, which lies between the airport and the Iraqi capital.

"We saw a pile of dead bodies at one of the four hospitals where the victims were taken. Most of them appeared to be military," he said. "But there were civilian casualties too."

"The Americans appear to have used rockets, artillery and warplanes in the area," he said, citing some of the injured.

US forces advancing on the Iraqi capital launched an assault on Baghdad's main airport on Thursday evening, military sources said.

Fawziya Kazem, who was being treated for head injuries at Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital, told Reuters: "US warplanes came and hit our house." Another patient, Ali Zubaei, said: "This is an area inhabited by innocent people. To hell with Bush. Iraq will be victorious."

US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair launched their war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on March 20 accusing him of concealing biological and chemical weapons.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing today that US forces had taken "several outlying areas and are closer to the centre of the Iraqi capital than many American commuters are from their downtown offices".

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war