IRAQ Bodies of 2 Turks, 1 other discovered

A U.S. airstrike targeted an alleged militant safe house in Fallujah.
SAMARRA, Iraq (AP) -- The bodies of two slain Turkish citizens and an unidentified man were discovered in northern Iraq, a police official said today, and Al-Jazeera reported receiving a statement from a militant group claiming to have killed three Turkish hostages.
The station said it had received the statement from Tawhid and Jihad, a group believed led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terror suspect held responsible for a string of attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces in Iraq.
The station said it also received a video, but did not broadcast any footage. It was not immediately possible to confirm the authenticity of the statement.
Maj. Sadoun Ahmed Matrud in Samarra said today that the bodies of three people -- two Turks and an unidentified man -- were found in northern Iraq late Wednesday. It was not immediately clear when the three were killed, nor what they were doing in Iraq.
Police found identification on two of the bodies that showed they were Turks, but nothing was discovered on the third body.
Two Turkish truck drivers were kidnapped Aug. 14 in Mosul, while a third, who worked for a laundry service, was kidnapped in late July. Their fate was unknown.
Turkey's Foreign Ministry in Ankara and the Turkish Embassy in Baghdad both said they had no information.
Increased kidnappings
Militants waging a violent 16-month insurgency in Iraq have increasingly turned to kidnapping foreigners here in recent months as part of an effort to drive out coalition forces and contractors. Other groups have taken hostages in hopes of extorting ransom.
French envoys were holding crisis talks in Iraq and Jordan today in a desperate bid to free two journalists seized by militants seeking to overturn France's law banning Islamic head scarves in public schools.
A day earlier, militants in Iraq released seven foreign truckers they held for six months after receiving a ransom payment from the drivers' Kuwaiti employer.
Meanwhile, a U.S. airstrike targeting an alleged militant safe house in Fallujah killed some 17 people including three children, according to doctors and accounts from the scene of the blast, and angry crowds gathered to mourn the victims and denounce the United States.
"There is only one God, Allah!" crowds chanted at the Fallujah General Hospital, where the bombing casualties were brought before dawn today.
A blanket covered with body parts could be seen lying on the ground, while relatives loaded corpses into the back of a pickup truck for burial.
"It is because of the Americans," one man shouted.
Targeting militant's followers
The U.S. military said it had carried out a precision strike late Wednesday on a safe house in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, used by followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
He is a Jordanian militant believed responsible for bombings, kidnappings and other violence in Iraq.
Witnesses said the strike hit a residential house in the southern neighborhood of al-Jubail.
Dr. Ahmed Hamid of Fallujah General Hospital said the bodies of nine civilians, including three children, had been brought to the hospital. An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw eight additional bodies pulled from the rubble.
U.S. forces have repeatedly carried out airstrikes in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, since Marines pulled back after a three-week siege of the city in April aimed at rooting out Sunni Muslim insurgents.
In other violence, two people were killed today in a roadside bomb explosion about 45 miles southwest of the northern city of Kirkuk, according to police Col. Sarhat Qadir.