by Fares al-Dulaimi
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Sept 9 (AFP) - Women and children were among 12 Iraqis killed in the hotspot of Fallujah when US jets struck targets the military charged were hideouts used by the most wanted man in Iraq.
Local residents removed bodies from the rubble of a house in the restive Sunni Muslim city demolished in the dead of night by a US missile while people were sleeping, an AFP correspondent said.
The US air force has been relentlessly pounding the extremist militant stronghold since seven marines were killed on Monday in a car bomb attack against a convoy which also left three Iraqi national guardsmen dead.
Doctor Mushtak Taleb from Fallujah's general hospital said 12 bodies had been brought in, including five children and two women, and that at least nine people had been wounded since the raids began.
Witnesses told AFP that the family who lived in the single-storey house was sleeping on the roof when the missile ploughed through the building, blowing their bodies to smithereens.
The roof had collapsed entirely and two small cranes were trying to lift up the debris to allow rescuers to search for more people.
Several neighbouring houses in the Nowad al-Dhubat district were damaged and children could be seen sifting through rubble and mangled metal to help collect pieces of flesh.
"We were sleeping on the roof because the electricity keeps going off at night. When the the explosion went off, the blast threw me back by at least five metres," said neighbour Khaled Abbas.
"First I thought the explosion was in my house but when I awoke from the shock I saw that the neighbours had been hit," he told AFP.
He said the owner the house had four wives, two of whom lived in the house with at least 10 children.
"All the children next door used to fill the streets with noise. Today I hope they will be like birds in heaven," Abbas said. "I want to know why the Americans decided to bomb a family with children."
The US military said it had carried out a raid in Fallujah overnight against a hideout used by operatives of suspected Al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network in Iraq.
US forces "conducted a precision strike on a confirmed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi operating location in northern Fallujah. The target was a building frequently used by terrorists... Three Zarqawi associates were reported to be in the area, no other individuals were present at the time of the strike."
The Jordanian-born Zarqawi is blamed by US officials for dozens of car bomb attacks in Iraq has a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head.
A total of 20 Iraqis were killed in another raid against suspected Zarqawi hideouts in Fallujah a week ago.
The US military reported late Wednesday that one of its helicopters had crashed near Fallujah but did not specify whether it had been shot down and said only that the four-man crew was safe.