FALLUJAH, Iraq, Sept 2 (AFP) - Twenty Iraqis were killed and six wounded in a US air strike overnight on suspected Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi safe houses in Fallujah, medical officials and the US military said Thursday.
Fighting also raged Thursday in Fallujah`s sister city of Ramadi, where a shootout between the US military and insurgents left two civilians killed and 11 wounded, police and hospital officials said.
Two buildings were destroyed when a US fighter jet fired a pair of missiles or a large bomb around 11:45 pm (1945 GMT) in the residential neighbourhood of Jebel in Fallujah, a hotspot of radical Sunni insurgency 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad, police and medical officials said.
"We now have 17 dead people and six wounded," Doctor Seifeddin Taha of the Fallujah general hospital told AFP late Wednesday.
Another three bodies were pulled from the rubble Thursday as bulldozers cleared wreckage and a crowd of rescue workers dug through the debris and searched for body parts and bits of flesh, said rescue worker Hossam Ibrahim.
"All the wounded are families. Among the dead, there could be two or three children but the bodies are torn to pieces and it`s difficult to tell," Taha told AFP.
Two giant craters gouged the ground, leaving one house completely destroyed and the second badly damaged. The blast knocked down a few palm trees and smashed up furniture and television could be seen in the wreckage.
The US military described the attack as a "precision" strike on "safe houses and meeting locations" for associates of the Jordanian-born Zarqawi whom US officials blame for dozens of car bomb attacks in Iraq and who has a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head.
Earlier in the day, Zarqawi supporters were observed removing a corpse from a car trunk and burying the body in southern Fallujah, the military said.
The military had no immediate casualty figures from the attack.
Five people were killed and 42 wounded on Saturday when US marines pounded suspected extremist positions in the restive city, a bastion for the country`s most violent groups which the US military and Iraqi forces have failed to rein in.
The US military has regularly bombed suspected Zarqawi safe houses in Fallujah for three months.
In April, Fallujah was the scene of bitter fighting, leaving hundreds dead as US marines and insurgents clashed in the streets. US forces besieged the city after four American civilian security contractors were killed in Fallujah and two of the bodies mutilated.
Fallujah`s province of al-Anbar has become a focal point of the Sunni Muslim rebellion against the Americans, with violence spreading across the desert region.
Clashes erupted Thursday in Ramadi, Anbar`s capital, as US forces and unknown gunmen traded fire for one hour, leaving two civilians dead and 11 wounded, local police and hospital officials said.