BAGHDAD: A US air strike yesterday on a Falluja neighbourhood previously targeted by US forces destroyed a house and killed 14 people, hospital and local officials said.

US officials declined to provide details of the strike, deferring to the Iraqi Defence Ministry, which had no immediate comment.

The strike was the sixth on the city since June 19. In previous strikes, the United States said it was targeting safehouses used by the network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant blamed for masterminding car bombings and other attacks in Iraq.

Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has promised more intense co-operation between local leaders and the Americans in rooting out terrorism and said after a July 5 air strike in Falluja that his government had provided the intelligence for the strike.

Explosions from the strike yesterday morning rocked the city. Scores of people ran to the scene and dug through the wreckage looking for survivors. One witness, who declined to give his name, said the house belonged to a "very poor family." Angry crowds gathered around the hit house, chanting "God is great."

"We heard the sound of jet fighters and then we heard four explosions in the house occupied by civilian residents," Lieutenant Saad Khalaf of the Falluja Brigade, a defence force that guards the city.

Body parts were scattered around the scene; some were stacked and covered by a gray blanket.

The attack killed 14 people and injured three, according to Saad al-Amili, a health ministry official.

US Marines besieged Falluja, a hotbed of resistance against US forces, for several weeks last spring and then handed over security to a new "Falluja Brigade" made up of local residents and commanded by officers from Saddam's former army. Many of those who fought the Marines joined the brigade.

Over the past 15 months, militants have used car bombs, sabotage, kidnappings and other attacks to try to destabilize the country.

In response to demands made by militants holding a Filipino truck driver, Philippine leaders said yesterday they would finish withdrawing troops from Iraq this week.

The pull-out, engineered to save the life of the driver Angelo dela Cruz, was scheduled to end as early as today, Philippine Foreign Minister Delia Albert said.

In another development, Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that "400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves" is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.

The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a US Government pamphlet on Iraq's mass graves.

Meanwhile, Poland will keep troops in Iraq at least through the end of 2005, but firmly intends to reduce its presence at the start of next year, Prime Minister Marek Belka said yesterday.

(China Daily 07/19/2004 page1)