by Mujahid Mohammed
TALL AFAR, Iraq, Sept 9 (AFP) - At least 40 people were killed when US-led forces spearheaded overnight assaults on Iraq`s northern trouble spot of Tall Afar and the notorious insurgent bastion of Fallujah, officials said Thursday.
Meanwhile, Italy launched a desperate diplomatic bid to save two kidnapped women aid workers only two weeks after Islamic captors killed an Italian journalist.
The US Army sealed off Tall Afar Thursday after 12 hours of fierce fighting that health ministry officials said left at least 28 dead and more than 70 wounded.
The US military reported no coalition casualties but said up to 57 Iraqis were killed in the clashes which pitted its forces against insurgents.
US troops announced through loudspeakers that for five days, residents would not be allowed to enter the town, which they charge is infested with fighters who infiltrated from Syria.
The Iraqi Red Crescent was setting a camp just outside Tall Afar for local residents whose houses were destroyed or who are fleeing the combat zone.
In Fallujah, the greatest symbol of resistance to US occupation in Iraq, jets pounded the city in a relentless series of night-time raids, killing 12 Iraqis, including five children and two women, a doctor said.
Nine others were wounded.
At one house flattened by a US missile, an AFP correspondent saw locals drag five bodies out of the rubble and children help retrieve pieces of flesh.
Witnesses said the family that lived in the house was sleeping on the roof when the missile struck, blowing them to pieces.
US warplanes have pummelled the western city, which the military has classified as a den of foreign terror networks, ever since seven marines and three Iraqi national guardsmen were killed in a car bombing on Monday.
The Marine Corps said the latest raid was a "precision strike" on a hideout used by militants loyal to Iraq`s most wanted man, alleged Al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has a 25-million-dollar price on his head.
"Three Zarqawi associates were reported to be in the area, no other individuals were present at the time of the strike," a statement said.
Meanwhile, fears that the town of Samarra could become another Fallujah were eased following a deal between the US military and local leaders, allowing US troops into the northern Sunni Muslim bastion for the first time since June.
The latest raids were part of recent string of operations carried out by the Iraqi national guard with US military backing to crack down on rebel strongholds.
But UN Secretary General Kofi Annan suggested Thursday that a political approach might be successful.
"This requires a commitment to stop relying solely or mainly on the threats or actual use of armed force," he said in a report.
On the hostage crisis, Italy`s junior foreign minister Margherita Boniver was to arrive in Jordan Friday on the first leg of a regional tour aimed at winning the release of two female aid workers who were kidnapped from their office in central Baghdad on Tuesday.
Boniver said she was desperate to raise "awareness in the Arab world about how monstrous the kidnapping of these two women was".
As the Italian adminstration swung into crisis mode, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was to hold talks Friday with Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawar, who is on a European tour to muster support for his war-torn country.
A coordinator for charitable activities has said most of the 50 aid groups with foreign staff in Iraq are planning to leave after the two 29-year-olds were snatched in broad daylight in a quiet residential neighbourhood.
Two months from the US presidential election and with the debate over the merits of the war to oust Saddam Hussein showing no let-up, a top UN weapons inspector challenged one of Washington`s key justifications for war.
A new report by Dimitri Perricos said that, despite US claims, inspectors found no evidence that former dictator Saddam Hussein`s regime had developed pilotless airplanes that could drop chemical and biological weapons on distant targets.
It also concluded that the Iraqi authorities installed by the United States after Saddam`s ouster quickly began exporting scrap metal, including dozens of engines from banned missile systems.
As the US military death toll in Iraq passed the 1,000 mark, Democratic White House hopeful John Kerry has slammed President George W. Bush for plotting a "catastrophic course" in the strife-torn country.
"A glance at the front pages or a look at the nightly news shows brings home the hard reality: Rising instability, spreading violence, growing extremism, havens now created" for terrorists, Kerry said on the Ohio campaign trial.