US-led forces said they killed between 20 and 25 people in an air strike Friday on a suspected safe house of alleged al Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi in the hotspot Iraqi town of Fallujah.
"Today, coalition forces conducted another strike on a known Zarqawi network safe house in south-eastern Fallujah, based on multiple confirmations of Iraqi and coalition intelligence," the coalition's deputy director of operations, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, said.
"This operation employed precision weapons to target and destroy the safe house," he said.
A senior military official said between 20 and 25 people were killed in the attack, which was along the same lines as two other airborne missile strikes on suspected Zarkawi hideouts in Fallujah over the past week.
The total death toll from the three raids is 59 to 64 people, the US military, warning that it would not shrink from carrying out further such strikes.
"Wherever and whenever we find elements of the Zarqawi network, we will attack them," Kimmitt said.
Zarqawi, a fugitive Jordanian who has a 10-million-dollar US bounty on his head, has been accused by US and Iraqi officials of being behind numerous atrocities in Iraq.
Some believe he may be holed up in Fallujah, a bastion of Sunni opposition to the US-led occupation, 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad.
Zarqawi heads his own militant faction named Tawhid wa al-Jihad (Unification and Holy War) which has claimed responsibility for two huge car bombings in Iraq this month as well as the beheading of a South Korean hostage.
As violence raged across Iraq's Sunni heartland Thursday, fighters in the town of Baquba, north-east of the capital, pledged allegiance to Zarqawi's faction in a pamphlet handed out to residents, threatening them with death if they helped US forces.
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