U.S. Airstrike Kills 18 in Fallouja

The U.S. military launched an airstrike in Fallouja on Saturday against what it called a terrorist hide-out, killing at least 18 Iraqis and reigniting anti-American passions in that stronghold of the insurgency.

Military officials said they believed the targeted house was used by agents of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born fugitive whom U.S. leaders have labeled the mastermind of a wave of attacks in Iraq, including the beheading of American civilian contractor Nicholas Berg.

There were no indications that Zarqawi, who is said to have ties to the Al Qaeda terrorist network, was in the house at the time, though U.S. officials said they believed he had been hiding in Fallouja.

“Wherever and whenever we find elements of the Zarqawi network, we will attack them,” Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the top U.S. military spokesman here, said Saturday.

Witnesses and Fallouja leaders condemned the attack, saying that an innocent family lived in one of the houses that was destroyed.

At least two homes were leveled, and residents worked for hours to recover bodies from the rubble. Witnesses said the dead included women and children.

“It seems that the Americans want chaos instead of stability,” said Hammad Dahash, 60, who said that one of his relatives died in the attack. “The people of Fallouja have condemned this. We have convened a series of meetings with the U.S. to calm down the situation here, but look what cowardly acts they have done.”

The attack was the biggest U.S. military strike in Fallouja since early May, when American officials reached a truce with insurgents in the Sunni Muslim city. The accord ended a three-week siege that killed 10 Marines and hundreds of Iraqis.

Under a controversial cease-fire agreement, U.S. officials agreed to withdraw troops from Fallouja and turn over control to a special security force, called the Fallouja Brigade, led by former officers of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

But U.S. military officials have expressed growing frustration at the performance of the brigade, which appears to have ceded control of some parts of the city to insurgents and Sunni Muslim fundamentalists, who are imposing strict religious rules on the population.

In addition, the brigade has made little progress in finding those responsible for killing four American civilian contractors in March. Images of the contractors’ bodies being mutilated triggered the siege of Fallouja.

The airstrike, which came less than two weeks before the United States is scheduled to formally hand over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government, reinforced recent U.S. promises that the military would remain active and aggressive even after the transfer of authority.

U.S. officials declined to comment Saturday on whether the Fallouja Brigade or local officials participated in the strike or were consulted beforehand.

A senior military official denied that the airstrike tactic suggested that the U.S. was unable or unwilling to deploy ground forces in the volatile city.

A Fallouja police official said local leaders were not consulted. “There was nothing that necessitated such an attack,” said 1st Lt. Abdul Rehman Fadhil, 40. “We want Fallouja to be a peaceful and safe city.”

Hundreds of angry residents gathered at the site of the attack, chanting anti-American slogans and vowing revenge. Several cars and nearby buildings were damaged by what witnesses described as two missiles, one of which appeared to have left a 20-foot crater.

U.S. officials blamed some of the deaths and destruction on secondary explosions that went on for as long as 20 minutes after the initial airstrike, as caches of weapons, ammunition and bomb-making materials in the house detonated. The existence of the armaments proved that the house was being used by terrorists, officials asserted.

Religious leaders accused the United States of breaking a promise to avoid violence.

“We do not understand what happened, because the Marines’ commander promised us that there would not be any further aggression in Fallouja,” Sheik Abdullah Janabi, spokesman for the Muslim Mujahedin Committee in Fallouja, told Al Jazeera television.

The airstrike was one of several spasms of violence around Iraq on Saturday, including fighting north of Baghdad and a roadside bombing near the southern city of Basra.

The roadside bomb was detonated Saturday morning in the town of Qibla, northwest of Basra. Witnesses said the bomb appeared to have been intended for a British military patrol, but it went off as a car passed by carrying a Portuguese engineer, an Iraqi police officer and two others.

Portuguese officials identified the engineer as Antonio Jose Monteiro Abelha, 36, who worked with the Iraqi state-run Oil Products Co.

North of Baghdad, fighting in Buhriz, a small town near Baqubah, spread to surrounding areas as insurgents tried to plant explosives along the roads, said Maj. Neal O’Brien, a spokesman for the Army’s 1st Infantry Division.

Fighting in the area began Wednesday when U.S. troops were attacked with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades as they wrapped up a meeting with a local mayor to discuss infrastructure and rebuilding projects. The next day, U.S. troops captured a man who they said was a local terrorist cell leader, Hussein Septi.

One soldier and 15 insurgents have been killed in the fighting, the military said.

Violence in Iraq has been rising as the June 30 hand-over of sovereignty approaches. Leaders in the interim government have vowed to crack down on those involved, and have said that imposing martial law is an option for stabilizing the nation.

But a senior official with the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority said Saturday that such steps might not be legal under Iraqi or international law.

“If we start going down the path where [interim government officials] think they need to engage in deprivation of individual liberties for the sake of maintaining security ... it would run into conflict with the interim constitution,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. But he said government officials still might have the power to impose restrictions, such as a curfew, without resorting to martial law.

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A Times special correspondent in Fallouja contributed to this report.