IRAQ U.S. bombs Fallujah home

The military suspected insurgents had gathered in the courtyard at the home.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. forces launched a "precision attack" this morning against a suspected gathering of insurgents outside a house in the volatile city of Fallujah, the U.S. military said.
The attack did not kill anyone but wounded five civilians, including three children, said Dr. Kamal Al-Ani, a local hospital official. The U.S. military did not indicate whether there were any casualties. Witnesses denied the house was harboring militants.
Also today, the military announced the deaths of two U.S. soldiers in a roadside bomb attack Thursday near Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad. A third soldier was wounded in the explosion.
The 6:30 a.m. attack in Fallujah, like several other recent strikes there, was conducted in coordination with the Iraqi government, the military said in a statement. It targeted between 10 and 12 terrorists linked to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the military said.
Al-Zarqawi has claimed responsibility for a series of car bombings and beheadings of foreigners in Iraq over the last several months.
Courtyard bombing
"The anti-Iraqi forces were struck while in the courtyard of a house; the house was left intact," the statement said.
Al-Ani, the Fallujah doctor, said a U.S. warplane fired a missile that landed in the garden of a house in the Jubail neighborhood in southern Fallujah. Associated Press Television News footage showed a massive crater beside the house.
"We were sleeping in the morning when a U.S. missile hit our house," Saddam Jassim, the home's owner, said as he and his brother cleared debris.
"We have nothing to do with the resistance or al-Zarqawi. These are pretexts used by the U.S. military to terrorize the people in Fallujah because U.S. soldiers are unable to face the insurgents," he said.
Marines pulled back from Fallujah -- a focal point of resistance to the U.S. occupation -- after besieging it for three weeks in April. Since then, the U.S. military has been limited to using missiles attacks and airstrikes to hit potential targets there.
The strike today was the seventh in little more than a month. The military said the attacks "have eroded Zarqawi's base of support and ability to carry out terror attacks against security forces and the people of Iraq."
Samarra attack
A U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Samarra roadside bombing occurred at 6:30 p.m. Thursday south of the city. Samarra was the scene of battles earlier this week that left four Iraqis dead and five wounded, a hospital official said.
The violence took the U.S. death toll in Iraq since the beginning of the war to 902, according to an Associated Press count. Iraq has been wracked by a 15-month-old insurgency that has used car bombings, sabotage, kidnappings and other violence to try to drive out coalition forces and hamper reconstruction efforts.
A bus driver and eight passengers -- including a pregnant woman and two children -- were wounded today in a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad's northern suburb of Toubechi, said police Lt. Rajab Saleh. Saleh said the bus driver had ignored police warnings not to enter the area, which had been cordoned off.
Hostage crises
Thursday, Beiji police official Taha Abdullah said police had found a decapitated body in an orange jumpsuit and a head in a bag on the banks of the Tigris River, prompting fears that a second Bulgarian hostage had been killed.
U.S. military spokesman Maj. Neal O'Brien today confirmed the discovery, saying police had discovered the decapitated body and that its "head had been placed in a backpack type bag and tied off to the back of the body." Police later took the body to a hospital in Tikrit, he added.
The decapitated body was found Wednesday in Beiji, a town north of Baghdad, Abdullah said.
The deepening hostage crises across Iraq led Kenya, facing an ultimatum by militants to behead three of its citizens in captivity, to tell its people Thursday to leave Iraq. The kidnappings have further complicated Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's efforts to persuade reluctant nations to join the U.S.-led coalition and send troops here.
Allawi asked Egypt "to talk to some Arab and Islamic leaders to send forces to protect" a U.N. mission in the country, he told reporters in Cairo.
But an official in the Egyptian president's office said Egypt would send troops only if other Arabs do so first. Wednesday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said: "Egypt will not send forces in any case."